Current & Upcoming

8/25/19 UPDATE: Another update already? That’s because I changed my mind. I still plan to complete Mark Lauren‘s 90 Day Challenge but my exercise ADD is kicking in big time. Plus I started doing doubles again. So I will be reviewing some 30-40 minute YouTube cardio workouts plus some more Yin Yoga. So, as it turns out, my reviews won’t be slowing down after all.

8/09/19 UPDATE: My reviews are about to slow down significantly for a while. I am in the middle of Mark Lauren’s 90 Day Challenge and that review will not post until I finish it in September. Through the end of the 90 days, only two more reviews will post. Ilaria Montagnani’s BodyStrikes 3 and Classical Stretch Season 8. Once I finish the 90 Day Challenge, I have a whole slew of new workouts to sample and review. 4 new-to-me kickboxing workouts, plus Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s new workouts should have arrived by then and I plan to do those. I have once again been on a Barlates buying binge–and BTW, I already had 5 or 6 of her DVDs waiting to be sampled and I just bought 4 more! In addition, I want to do Linda’s Metabolic Training and her Torch & Tone workouts. She is creating a 3rd similar series and plans to sell all 3 of them together in a box set, so I am kind of waiting on that before I do any of them. I also bought all 3 of Tracie Long’s Core Movements DVDs during one of her sales. That’s just all new stuff I’ve been accumulating! I still have stacks of older new-to-me DVDs I have not yet tried.

Now for the bad news. I have to have another surgery at the end of October. I am not happy about this but it is necessary. It is a much less serious surgery than the reconstruction I had done in April but it will still set me back again. If it wasn’t necessary, I seriously would say smuck it. I have been working very hard on Mark Lauren’s 90 Day Challenge and am back to doing push ups on my toes. Now I am working on how many I can do on my toes before I have to drop to my knees. And shortly after I finish the 90 Day Challenge–more post-surgery restrictions. It’s not 12 weeks this time, thank goodness, only 4 weeks, but still–how much will that set back my upper body strength? Because 12 weeks set me back a lot.

Whining session over. I have a plan for that 4 week period. I plan to subscribe to Classical Stretch’s streaming site and doing lots of Essentrics/Classical Stretch workouts. Plus, I am going to look very closely at all of my Barlates workouts–both the ones I have already reviewed here and ones I have not yet done, and find everything that is lower body focused, done entirely standing and uses no weights. And of course Jessica Smith walking workouts. So November will be Classical Stretch/Essentric reviews, Barlates and maybe Jessica Smith. I already have a ton of Jessica’s workouts to do and they’ve all been reviewed on this blog but if I decide to try some of her new-to-me YouTube walking workouts then I will review those. Finally, there are a few walking workouts on YouTube I’ve saved to try one day. I may give them a try in November.

6/21/19 UPDATE: Next week I see my surgeon and I expect to be released to do whatever I want. I’ve healed great so I don’t know why I wouldn’t be allowed to workout normally again. I’ve had to really pick and choose with the Barlates fusion/flow workouts I do because about half of them have plank based moves in them. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I am going to do when I no longer have any limitations. So here is the plan. I am doing the full 90 Days of Mark Lauren’s 90 Day Challenge. That review will not post until I complete the 90 days. I will also finish all of the Barlates fusion/flow workouts so those will eventually post by the end of July. This will be a 90 day body weight rotation for me. I have several goals. To regain my strength–but without dumbbells. The first tool for that is obviously Mark’s program. But I will be supplementing it with Barlates fusion/flow workouts and Ilaria‘s BodyStrike workouts. I will also be using Mark’s Mobility RX and Ilaria’s Abs & Push Ups Plus. The one other thing I will be doing is Classical Stretch workouts several times a week along with plenty of deep stretching. Because of my exercise ADHD I never stick with one mode of exercise so it is so hard to measure things. But I am doing this. I have chronic shoulder problems and I am hoping with all of the range of motion work I will be doing (Classical Stretch, Barlates, Mobility RX), I can not only improve my shoulders but also be able to do push ups on my toes again. It has been over a year since I have been able to do a push up on my toes. Cancer treatment really messed me up for a while but I am on the other side now. When the 90 Days is complete, I will post the review of Mark’s program, including my 90 day rotation.

5/23/19 UPDATE: As you can see–I finally launched the blog’s new look! It was a lot of work just to get it to where it is today and there is a lot more work that still needs to be done. Specifically on the Workout Types page. It took me a long time just to create the 3 categories that are currently there! I have a lot more categories planned, but they take a lot of time to create and I will not be home recovering from surgery forever. I am returning to work in a few weeks so things will slow down on that page. But I will keep plugging away, slowly but surely. I am sure I have missed things and also made some mistakes. If you happen to come across a mistake I made or something I missed, please shoot me a quick email (fitness@2lazy4gym.com) and let me know so I can fix it. However, with the launch of this new format, I think I will take a break from it for a day or two. I still have blog posts I need to create!

Which leads me to what is coming in the next month or so. I am still limited to lifting no heavier than 3 pound dumbbells, no impact and no planks. Those limits are in place until 12 weeks post surgery. I don’t know if I will have any more limitations after that (I have a follow up with the surgeon at the 12 week point so I will find out then) but even if I don’t, it will take some time to work myself back up to where I was pre-surgery. My current plan is lots of Barlates workouts, Jessica Smith fusion and walking workouts, some Classical Stretch workouts and Leslie Sansone workouts. I purchased 5 Leslie Sansone walking collections at this year’s library sale. They were only $1 each. I have started previewing them and I am hoping I can make it through the 5 I bought! I haven’t actually done one yet, but I feel like Leslie can get irritating real quick. Plus, they don’t look as fun as Jessica Smith’s walking workouts. But we shall see! So that is what is coming in the next month or so. If I am allowed to, at the 12 week point I hope to start Mark Lauren‘s 90 Challenge. I previewed that and I cannot even do the level 1 workouts right now–too many plank based moves.

4/30/19 UPDATE: My surgery is over and I am on the road to recovery. At this point all I am allowed to do is walk–so I am walking a lot! It will be a while before I can lift weights again and even longer before I can do exercises with impact. I foresee at least one follow up surgery but, compared to the surgery I just had, it will be very minor. Nevertheless it will extend how long I can’t lift weights or do impact. However, I have a plan for this rehabilitation. Bodyweight workouts! I plan to do Mark Lauren‘s 90 Day Challenge. I will be starting with the level 1 workouts and working my way up to the level 3 workouts. I will also be supplementing it with a lot of Linda Wooldridge’s (Barlates) new and easier workouts (Warm & Stretch Series, Dynamic Flow Series, Fusion Flow Series, Feel Good Series and Energy Flow Series) as well as more walking workouts from Jessica Smith and Leslie Sansone. I do not know when these reviews will begin posting but they are what I plan to use for my rehab/recovery workouts.

I know that right now my blog looks the same. But I have created a mock blog to test the new look so I don’t screw this blog up. I finally have the mock blog just how I want it, so I now I have to start building some of the content (in draft form) on this blog. Once everything is in place, I will launch the new look. So that is coming relatively soon. It will make this blog even more useful and easier to navigate. And more attractive!

4/09/2019 UPDATE: Rippedism 2 is my last post for a while. I am about to have major surgery with a long recovery period. I don’t know how long until I am recovered enough to start working out again. When I do, there are some new, easier workouts from Linda Wooldridge (Barlates) that are on my wishlist. I may buy and do them during my recovery. Plus, every year our library system has a huge sale. Everything is super cheap. All DVDs are $1. At their recent sale I bought a bunch of workout DVDs, including a several Leslie Sansone walking workouts. I enjoy Jessica Smith’s walking workouts so much, maybe I will like Leslie’s, too? I know Jessica got me through cancer treatment. I previewed some of Leslie’s workouts that I bought and man, she is excited about walking! So I will probably review some of hers. Also, I found some walking workouts by other people on YouTube that intrigued me. These are just thoughts btw. Who knows what I will actually do when the time comes?

I don’t know when I will start posting workout reviews again—but I will, eventually. I have some ideas about changing the look of my blog, so it may be getting a facelift. We’ll see.

2/14/19 UPDATE: Since I have all of my workouts mapped out until my surgery in mid-April, I can talk about what will be posting between now and then. I still have Tracie Long workouts to do–all of her Metabolic Strength workouts, plus I pre-ordered her Grand Total Vol 2 & Vol 3. They haven’t shipped but if they ship before mid-April I plan to do them. I finally received Jessica Smith’sGet Strong! DVD! I will be doing those workouts very soon. I also ran across a few more of Jessica Smith’s free YouTube workouts I want to try. So I might do a few of those as well. I recently learned that some of Ellen Barrett’s workouts are posted on YouTube, so I plan to try some of those. I will be doing all 3 of Cathe‘s Advanced Fit Tower workouts. I have previewed them all and I suspect Total Body will be one of my all time favorite workouts. It looks awesome.

All of this is part of the build up before my surgery. I am pushing myself harder now, trying to rebuild my fitness level for two reasons. First and foremost–to recover from surgery better and faster. But also, I have been asked to try Rippedism 2. Rippedism 1 is an awesome program, but it is advanced and challenging, so I was afraid I wasn’t ready for Rippedism 2, but then I decided it gives me a goal to work towards. So I am building myself up, increasing the level of the workouts I do to prepare myself to begin Rippedism 2 at the end of March and finish it right before my surgery. So that may be the last review I post before a long hiatus. Tracie Long’s Grand Total workouts may post after Rippedism 2 if they do not arrive relatively soon. I really want to do them before I can’t do anything at all–but I also need time to work them into my rotation. I have no clue what I will be doing after that. Not much for several weeks! From everything I hear standing and walking will be a challenge. I will have to rehab again after that and I plan to do that with workouts that have already been reviewed here.

However, since I won’t have anything to do for a month or more, I do plan to make some changes to the way the blog looks. So hopefully during that time I do not delete it by accident. I want to make it easier to navigate. So I plan to spend some time during my recovery re-vamping this blog.

1/18/19 UPDATE: I received Cathe‘s LITE series and I have been previewing all of the workouts. I plan to start actually doing them Monday January 21. But the reviews will not start posting until the beginning of February. The reason for that is twofold. First, I want to do each workout twice before I post the review and I also want to be able to complete the series review (each workout will have it’s own post plus I will have a post for the LITE series as a whole). The second reason feeds into the first. I am in a different place fitness-wise than I was just a year ago or when I first did Cathe’s ICE series in 2016. I am no longer an advanced exerciser. But part of my mind still thinks I can lift heavy so I frequently overshoot what I can actually lift now. So I want to do each workout once using the weights Cathe uses (except for on a few exercises–she lifts too light on deadlifts even for the intermediate exercisers) and record whether I need to lift heavier or lighter to make the workout more effective for me. And then actually do the workout a second time using the (possibly) heavier weight. That way I can give a more accurate review of the series (at least for my purposes).

As for Jessica Smith’s new Get Strong DVD, it finally became available on Amazon again and I ordered it, but now they keep changing the date I should receive it. It has been saying I should receive it today but that changed this morning and now they are saying I won’t receive it till next week. I hope they don’t just cancel it on me like they did the person who tried to give it to me as a Christmas gift! So I have no idea when that review will go up. Obviously not before LITE but some time after the LITE review goes up. In addition, I have 6 or 7 more Tracie Long DVDs I purchased. Those will be reviewed sometime before mid-April.

12/20/18 UPDATE: Time for my monthly update! I’ve really been enjoying doing Tracie Long workouts. I checked a lot out from the library and I only have one more of those to get through. But I have purchased almost all of the ones I’ve tried plus 4 more! So there are more Tracie Long reviews to come. But my #1 priority will be Cathe‘s new workouts. The delivery of these are impending. I always pre-order Cathe workouts the day she starts her pre-orders–in fact, the moment I get wind of them I am at her site pre-ordering. I always receive the workouts at the end of December. Well here we are! And from all of her updates this month it looks like things are moving along as usual. In addition, I have a birthday within a week of Christmas and I have asked for all of Jessica Smith’s new workouts. So I am sure I will get them for Christmas or my birthday. In addition, I have some other reviews in the works: Cathe’s Fit Tower workouts (the ones that come with the Fit Tower, not the advanced ones sold separately on her website) and Jessica Smith’s Walk On Super Set: The Ultimate Walking Collection. So that is what will be posting in the upcoming months–Cathe, Jessica Smith and Tracie Long workouts. My reconstruction surgery is mid-April and that will put a complete stop to any exercise other than walking for at least a month. Then I will be back to building myself back up. Between now and then I plan to focus on intermediate workouts so my reviews will probably dwindle after January. That’s because I really want to focus on all of my new, new-to-me and older intermediate workouts–Tracie Long, Cathe’s ICE and LITE, Jessica Smith workouts and Kelly Coffey-Meyer. Though I do love trying new workouts, I really want to focus on these 4 trainers from now until April. Then, of course, starting in April there will be no reviews at all for a month or two. I don’t know when they will start up again but I am sure I will post something here.

11/16/18 UPDATE: Today it is a month since I finished cancer treatment. My improvement was slow at first but the past week–I feel back to my old self! I feel great! Seriously! I am building myself back up physically every day. The good (and rather daunting) news is–I have a ton of new-to-me workouts to try. I have this urge to do them all. NOW. But I need to take it slow. I have been working my way up using Jessica Smith workouts. I am about to embark on Walk Strong 3, which is her most advanced system. Once I get through that I plan to do Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s new workouts and Jillian Michael’s new workouts. By that time Cathe‘s new LITE series might have arrived. If not, then I will start on her ICE series in preparation for it. Plus! I have already indulged in Black Friday impulse buys! Cathe’s Fit Tower system is on sale for half price. I said I would never buy it but I did! I bought it! So of course I had to then purchase all of the workouts she created to go with it. Good thing she had another coupon for that–I got 20% off and free shipping for those. It’s not even Black Friday yet and I’ve already spent over $100!!! But I am excited. So I will be reviewing those, too. Like I said, I feel fantastic! I did not think I would feel this good this soon and part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop. But treatment is over! So the other shoe shouldn’t drop, right? I have a date for reconstruction surgery–it’s not till April 2019. So I have 4 months to work hard and build myself back up so I breeze through reconstruction recovery (or so I hope). I chalk feeling 100% less than a month after completing treatment to the fact I worked out nearly every day during treatment. I really think that played a big part in getting me through it.

Anyway, that’s where I am now and the more advanced reviews will start posting again. However. I really like Jessica Smith’s walking workouts. I’m not going to lie. This past year made me wonder if there was a point to how hard I used to push myself. I did workouts even when I didn’t enjoy them. There was always an afterglow–I loved hating them. But am a 47 year old cancer survivor. I am not sure I want to do workouts I hate anymore, even if I love the afterglow. But we’ll see, won’t we? I do plan to keep doing Jessica’s walking workouts, even if they are just my doubles workouts. I’m not back to doing doubles again yet, but I do see it in my future. (o:

10/16/18 UPDATE: I am having a hard time getting through radiation due to side effects that will not go away as long as they keep radiating me (pericarditis, pneumonitis, pleurisy). The good news is today is my last radiation treatment! Fingers crossed I start healing and feeling better soon. But I know it will not happen overnight. It will take several weeks (possibly a month or more) until I start feeling normal again. Because of this I have had to reduce my workouts to 30 minutes a day and much lower intensity. I have been doing Jessica Smith only–her newest workouts (Feel Good Fusion and Total Stretch) plus Walk Strong #1 and her Walk On workouts. Because of this, I will be reviewing some more of Jessica’s Walk On workouts/systems. In the next month I plan to do her Walk the Weight Off fitness system and her Metabolism BoosterDVD. Those are the only things I know for sure will be posting in the next month. Once I start feeling better I hope to do my Firm Wave workouts, Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s newest workouts (Step Boxing 2 and Sculpting RX). I don’t know about ChaLean Extreme now–mostly because I remember that the cardio in that system has lots of impact and whether or not I can do impact depends a lot on my lungs. However Cathe‘s Lite series might be here in December and I know that will be low impact so, if I am able, I will probably just jump right into her new series when it arrives. At some point however I really want to do ChaLean Extreme again. But now that may not happen until after reconstruction (which is currently supposed to happen early next year).

9/23/18 UPDATE: I don’t know what is going to happen anymore. I truly thought radiation would be easier than chemo and it was at first. But I finished my 3rd week of radiation with pericarditis, which is inflammation of the sack around my heart. It wasn’t diagnosed properly because it is more common for people receiving chest radiation to develop pleurisy or costochondritis, so that is what my oncologist first assumed and treated for. But it got worse and I became unable to use my left arm. So I was sent to the heart hospital ER where it was finally diagnosed properly. It has improved but like with everything that I have gone through during cancer treatment the medications they use to help with the side effects of cancer treatment have their own host of side effects that cause even more problems. So even though I can now breathe without too much pain and move my left arm again, I still have shortness of breath and other issues that make working out difficult.

This is especially disappointing because right before this happened, I started ramping things up again. I was doing some Cathe workouts (Push Pull and Flex Train) and had more planned for the upcoming weeks (Super Sets, Super Cuts, Great Glutes, ICE workouts). But now I do not think I can do them and I may not even be able to finish my Firm workouts right now. I am doing my best tho. I bought Jessica Smith‘s newest workouts Total Stretch and Feel Good Fusion, and I have also been doing one of Tamal Dodge‘s beginner level Elementyoga workouts. I am hoping to get back on track and finish all of the Firm reviews I had planned as well as try out Jillian’s Michaels new Lift & Shred. That is what I have/had planned for the coming weeks but we will see if my reactions to treatment allow me to do it.

What I do have planned when radiation is over, is ChaLean Extreme and I don’t know why I wouldn’t be able to do that but we’ll see. I have created a nice little rotation for that using Kelly Coffey-Meyer premixes and The Firm Express. I will hopefully be able to do and post the review and rotation before the year is out.

8/11/18 UPDATE: I am having a lot of fun doing The Firm. I still have a lot of Firms to review. I’ve done most of the BSS1 & 2 workouts but there are still a few more coming. Whats left is a lot of pinks and some classics. I do plan to do most of the pinks. There are some I remember not liking and only doing once and I don’t think I will bother with those. The Firm Express will be reviewed which I remember loving. I am still on the fence about the Classic Firms so they may or may not be reviewed. There is also The Wave. I think I will review that one but I can’t promise. I do remember finding The Wave workouts easier than most Firms and since I already have more than a month of workouts mapped out, I don’t know if I will feel like doing easier workouts at that point. So we’ll see! I have purchased the first Firm workout program/DVD that I have bought in years. The Firm’s Zip Trainer program. I knew the Firm was no longer in the business of selling DVDs/equipment and their website has disappeared so when I saw that you could still purchase the entire Zip Trainer program–equipment and all–I bought it. So that will be reviewed here soon, too.

On the cancer front–chemo is done! I finished my last chemo infusion 3 weeks ago. I do have radiation in my very near future but the date it starts has not been set yet. So, in reference to the above, maybe The Wave workouts will be perfect for when I am nearing the end of radiation. I have heard the effects of radiation are cumulative so by the end I may need to be taking it down a notch. I am so enjoying my Firm workouts so I will be doing that for a while, but I can never stop thinking about and missing my Cathe workouts. No matter how wonderful I find other workouts and trainers, I feel like no one works me as well as Cathe when it comes to strength training. So I do plan to start working some of her more intermediate workouts in to my rotations in a month or so (Push Pull, Super Sets, Flex Train) as well as my favorite Jari Love workout (Get Ripped 1000). Once I feel like I am stronger and my stamina is where it used to be, I want to start the real build. So I plan to return to ChaLean Extreme. I have done that program 3 times in the past but haven’t returned to it in years–which is why it hasn’t been reviewed here. So that will finally be reviewed. I also recently purchased two more programs. Mark Lauren‘s 90 Day Challenge and RIPT90 FIT. Mark Lauren, like Cathe and Kelly Coffey-Meyer is just an auto buy for me when he comes out with anything new, but RIPT90 Fit I got on some Amazon flash sale. I never intended to get it but I can’t pass up a super cheap workout program–especially when I really enjoyed RIPT90. (I also pre-ordered Kelly’s newest workouts!) And then I have all of the workouts and programs mentioned in the updates below that I still haven’t gotten to. So as I get stronger–there is more coming!

7/18/18 UPDATE: The Firm. That’s the update. I pulled the entire box of Firm workouts out of my closet. That is a lot of Firm workouts. The pinks, BSS 1 & 2, the classics, TransFirmer, Firm Box–even the Wave!!!! I have them all. Doing them makes me happy right now so that is what I am going to keep doing.

6/01/18 UPDATE: Not sure this is truly an update since nothing has really changed. I am halfway through chemo, so there is an end in sight! I’ve got a rhythm down now–I know how it affects me, so I have one week where I do easy workouts then I am able to kick it up and lift heavier weights for a week before the next infusion (I get a chemo infusion every 2 weeks). So an every other week schedule of getting in some good weight training. Currently, I am doing primarily Kelly Coffey-Meyer strength work (Muscle Up, Weights and Your Best Body) on my “good” week, and Jessica Smith walking workouts and Mark Lauren’sYAYOG Novice workouts on my easy week (plus other things thrown in here and there).

Being unable to do more advanced workouts has not stopped me from buying them! I have a lot of Barlates DVDs waiting for me to try, Jillian Michaels’ Lift & Shred, I actually bought more Dream Body programs (what was I thinking when I did that?!?), quite a few Mindy Mylrea workouts, I pre-ordered Cathe’s new series Lite, Jari Love’sGet Ripped 1000 #3, and then all of the workouts I had been accumulating before I was ever diagnosed with cancer that I still haven’t done! So, yeah. When I am able, I have a lot of catching up to do! I don’t know how radiation will affect me when I enter that phase of treatment but I am supposed to have a long hiatus from the time I finish treatment until I undergo reconstruction (something like 3-5 months). During that time I plan to do a lot of these workouts that I cannot stop hoarding. Then reconstruction will tear me back down. But hey, it’s a process and once reconstruction is behind me, I can finally work on getting myself back to my previous fitness level. I truly feel that continuing to do what I am capable of (exercise-wise) is what is getting me through this and will eventually make it possible for me to be strong again.

BTW–thank you for all of the prayers and well wishes. It helps more than you know to know people are pulling for me!

4/24/18 UPDATE: Chemo is a completely different animal from recovering from surgery. My blog posts are going to slow down to a trickle for a while. Not because I stopped exercising but because I need to stick with the tried and true. I am lifting weights again and on my good days I am slowly increasing what I lift. For that I am using Jessica Smith’s strength workouts from her Walk Strong program, Cathe‘s ICE workouts and Cathe Live workouts that I have already done and reviewed. I do have new-to-me workouts that I will probably eventually get to during chemo but they will be Jessica’s Walk On workouts and Barlates workouts. My focus for the next few months is on getting through this. Building my strength back on my good days and just doing something on my bad days.

3/19/18 UPDATE: I can now give a little more info on what I will be blogging about in the next year. The mastectomy is done and I am learning what I can and can’t do. So for now–extremely low impact workouts. I can do advanced lower body barre work–as long as it is all standing. The mat work I can do has to be on my back (bridge work, hamstring roll ins, etc), as I learned through trial and error. Until my incision is completely healed, no mat work on my hands and knees (or elbows). This surprisingly leaves a lot that I can do. I am doing a lot of Jessica Smith‘s walking workouts. Not just her YouTube ones (which I have and will continue to review after I do them) but her DVD Walk Strong workouts that have already been reviewed here. Some of them are already low impact and in others her mother Debbie shows low impact modifications. I never in a million years thought I would be following Debbie in Jessica’s workouts, but guess what? I am now! There are also a lot of Linda Wooldridge‘s Barlates workouts I can do. I have been doing many that have already been reviewed here and I have quite a few marked to try out (so they will be reviewed here, too). When I start using weights again, I will start by doing barre upper body workouts (I have a lot–not just Linda, but Tracy Anderson, Tracey Mallet, Physique 57 and others that all use light dumbbells). I purchased Linda’s 3 DVD set that includes Barre Basics, Barre Intermediate and Barre Advanced. So when I start using dumbbells again, I will start with her Barre Basics and progress up from there, so all of those DVDs will eventually be reviewed. Finally, one of the things I have done is re-subscribed to Cathe‘s On Demand so I have access to Workout Blender. I have created workouts that cater to my specific needs. If you are interested in those, you can visit the blog post about it. I have updated that post with a description of the new workouts and, as I do the workouts, they will be added to that post. Since I am sharing them on blender that means that other people can access them, too, if interested. So that is what I anticipate blogging about in the next year–Barlates and Jessica Smith. When I am able to lift weights and jump again, I will probably start doing (and reviewing) Cathe Live workouts again since I get that automatically with On Demand.

Oh–and one more thing that might appear. I dug out some of my old workouts–Step Reebok (the original step workout/Gin Miller), Leslie Sansone’s walking workouts, some Firm workouts and some Chris Fretag workouts I did when rehabilitating after my heels were crushed 9 years ago. Some of those may end up being reviewed here. I know during chemo I will have ups and downs, so some weeks these easier workouts may be all I am capable of, so I may do them for variety. I do feel that Jessica will be my go-to when I don’t have the energy for an intense workout, but who knows?

2/20/18 UPDATE: I am not sure what I will be posting over the next… year? I have breast cancer and will be getting a mastectomy followed by chemo and radiation then reconstruction surgery, so I have a long road ahead. I will continue to post reviews until the surgery. Afterwards I am pretty sure I probably won’t be posting for a while. I have no intention of quitting working out but I will have to make some changes for a time. Maybe I will post reviews about workouts that are appropriate for rehabilitation. Who knows?

1/26/18 UPDATE: I have been doing some really great workouts lately, as you can tell from my blog posts! It’s been a lot of fun. The “fun” is about to end… at least for a week or so. I have quite a few more workouts I plan to get through but starting next week I am doing Linda Wooldridge’s Drop Sets. I have already previewed them all and I am scared. I paid for them, they look extremely effective but they do not look fun. They look painful. So that’s happening. I want to do all of Yvette Bachman’s YouTube workouts–at least up until today. She will continue to create more but I will have to take a break from them because I have created a 6 week rotation schedule that combines Cathe‘s Fit Split, Kelly Coffey-Meyer’sBuild & Burn, Jessica Smith’sWalk Strong 1 and Walk Strong 3, plus two of Jessica’s stand alone yoga DVDs. I plan to start that the end of February and when I complete it, I will post it. So up until I start that, I plan to do Linda’s Drop Sets, more Yvette workouts and all of the Jessica Smith DVDs I bought with the Amazon gift cards that were given to me for Christmas and my birthday. That will take me into April. During my Cathe/Kelly/Jessica 6 weeks, I will also be doing some new Barlates workouts for my doubles workouts. In April, I may create and do the Yvette Bachman rotation I am envisioning. It will consist of primarily Yvette’s workouts but I will mix in workouts by other trainers, too. Probably some Fit Body by Julia.

11/27/17 UPDATE: My December rotation is now complete. The first two weeks will be a lot of Barlates workouts and some more Jessica Smith. The last two weeks will be Fit Body by Julia workouts. Sprinkled throughout will be workouts from Yvette Bachman and one from Michele Lumadue—all of these are Youtube workouts, btw. Since my last two weeks of December will be brutal, I will begin the first week of January 2018 as a recovery week. I bought Jessica Smith’s Walk Strong 1 via Groupon and I plan to do all of the workouts in that program the first week of January. After that? I will be doing a rotation (that I will create) that combines Jessica’s Walk Strong 3, Cathe’s Fit Split and Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s Build & Burn. Until I receive Cathe’s and Kelly’s programs, I can’t really create the rotation. I am also waiting for Linda Wooldridge (Barlates) to offer her Drop Sets DVD. All of the Drop Sets workouts are available for purchase via Linda’s website (not free YouTube workouts) but I messaged her a few weeks ago about them and she said she would be putting out a DVD set with all of the Drop Set workouts on it. So I am holding out for those DVDs. Once I have those, I may also incorporate them into my rotation. It might end up being an 8 week rotation that alternates between 4 trainers. **12/01/17 Drop Sets is now available for pre-order at Total Fitness DVDs–I, of course, pre-ordered it immediately!**

That takes care of the rest of 2017 and the first few months of 2018. After that, I don’t know. I have ideas but my interests frequently change, so who knows? Right now I am considering creating a Fit Body by Julia rotation. If I like the Michele Lumadue workout I have planned, I might do more of her workouts. I have 6 Yvette Bachman workouts planned over the next month and even tho I haven’t done one yet (this weekend will be my first), I have previewed several and I can already tell I will really enjoy her workouts, so I am sure I will do more of hers.

I frequently get questions about Cathe Live. Although I love Cathe Live, unfortunately it is not free like all of the YouTube workouts I have been doing. Don’t misunderstand, I think Cathe Live is worth the monthly fee. When I was paying for it, I did primarily Cathe Live workouts. But for now my interests have shifted. I still love Cathe’s workouts and I still do Cathe workouts (DVDs), but over the past few months, she has stopped being the primary trainer I use. Sometimes I go a whole week without doing a single Cathe workout. Other weeks (like this week) I have 3 Cathe workouts planned. Until I can justify the monthly fee again, I will not be re-subscribing. And, as you can see from my plans above, I am booked for the next few months with workouts.

10/24/17 UPDATE: From the looks of my recent blog posts, I have really been on the Barlates and Jessica Smith train lately. But those are not the only workouts I have been doing. I have also been revisiting my Kelly Coffey-Meyer workouts. I still have all of November mapped out with more Barlates and Jessica Smith workouts—both new workouts and workouts I’ve already done/reviewed here. In addition, I have pre-ordered two new programs by favorite trainers: Cathe’s Fit Split (I probably won’t receive that until mid/late-December) and Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s Build & Burn—another fitness program. I expect to receive Kelly’s sooner than Cathe’s. So that is two programs by favorite trainers. I will obviously be doing those workouts fairly soon after receiving them. However, they are both programs and I feel some planning will need to go into using them. So starting in December I will probably be planning my rotation on a weekly or bi-weekly basis until I have those programs in hand and can start planning. Again, I don’t know how I will be approaching them yet. I like the idea of combining them so I may do that.

By the end of November I expect to have tried the majority of Jessica Smith’s free YouTube workouts that I am interested in. However, I have quite a few of her DVDs on my Amazon wishlist, including her program: Walk Strong (not walking workouts, btw). I always get Amazon gift cards for Christmas and my birthday (which is very close to Christmas), so I will probably buy some of her workouts that are on my wishlist. As for Barlates? I cannot imagine ever coming to an end of Linda’s workouts. She is one of the most prolific trainers I have ever seen. Every time I think I have seen (not done, just seen) everything of hers I am interested in, she creates something new—both free workouts and ones for sale! So, at some point my Barlates reviews will probably slow down, but I have no idea when. I still have a long list of Barlates workouts I plan to try—both free and on DVD.

With all that said, I do sometimes step back and ask myself—what is the point of buying and trying all of these awesome workouts that you love if you never return to them? Which leads me back to my first paragraph—I have been revisiting my Kelly Coffey-Meyer workouts, as well as revisiting Barlates workouts I love. And returning to these workouts is definitely making some of them really stand out as superior. I am creating a list of those workout—not just Barlates and Kelly Coffey-Meyer, but other trainers’ workouts, too (Cathe and Jessica are part of that list, obviously, as well as some other trainers). I want to create a balanced rotation for myself that incorporates all of these workouts that I consider superior. This is not an easy feat considering I have reviewed well over 500 workouts on this blog—and all of them are available to me whether on DVD or free on YouTube (or streamed from Cathe Live—we cannot forget that!). When I do this, I plan to share it on my rotations page.

Other than the ongoing Barlates and Jessica Smith reviews, none of the other things mentioned above will be happening any time soon. December/January time frame is probably the soonest. As for all of the other programs listed in updates below… they are still sitting on my shelf, collecting dust. I just don’t have the motivation to try them right now. Which is sad—I was apparently motivated when I spent money on them. But right now I am really enjoying what I am doing and it is challenging me in new ways, so I am going to keep doing it until I feel the need to do something else.

8/08/17 UPDATE: I have shifted gears so thoroughly that I decided to update here. If you follow my blog, I am sure you have noticed. I’m doing the YouTube thing again–my Streaming page is growing. But that’s not all. I have a new obsession–Linda Wooldridge/Barlates. I am seriously going overboard. This is like when I first discovered Cathe. I cannot stop buying her workouts. And she has so many free ones on YouTube! Why am I buying them? I have no explanation. Some of the ones I am buying are not available on YouTube–but lots of the ones I am buying are. I really have to stop. At this point I’ve bought 15 of her DVDs, each of which contains multiple workouts. And there is one more on my wishlist I really want. So… I’m sure I will buy that one, too. Due to this current obsession, she will be filling my blog feed for a while. Just FYI. I am still trying other trainers on YouTube but the only other one I am also obsessed with is Jessica Smith. So I have plans to do a lot more of her free YouTube workouts, too.

Other things in the works. I am currently doing Paul Katami‘s 4×4 program. That review will post this month. Mindy Mylrea recently had a sale on her website. All of her workout DVDs for $3.99 each and she had some really cool looking ones that use gliding disks and medicine balls. So I bought a bunch of those. I have already created my rotation through September so I know I will be doing a lot of Mindy’s workouts. And of course, I pre-ordered Cathe’s upcoming series–Fit Split, which is estimated to be released Winter 2017. If it’s like all her other series I have pre-ordered in the past, I won’t receive it until sometime in December, which means I probably won’t actually do it until January 2018.

And there won’t be anymore Cathe Live reviews for a while. I canceled my subscription when I started doing Paul’s 4×4 series and I don’t know when I will be re-subscribing. I know I will at some point, but right now I am having fun doing other workouts. I haven’t stopped doing Cathe workouts–I am just doing her DVDs again.

6/21/17 UPDATE: I just finished another round of MetaShred Extreme mixed with my Cathe Blender workouts. I have a lot of new-to-me workouts to try but I am lacking motivation to do them. I am in a place right now where I seem to only want the familiar. So I have been doing primarily Cathe workouts: her blender, her DVD and her Live workouts. I have been doing a few new-to-me workouts here and there. Some Tracey Mallet, so there will be one or two more reviews of her older Method workouts going up. I am doing some Barlates workouts, too, but they come 4 workouts to a DVD so those reviews won’t be going up right away (I’ve been doing one workout a week). And finally, I subscribed to The Yoga Collective (a Groupon). I plan to do an overall review of that streaming site, but I want to do a lot more of those workouts before I even start the review, let alone post it (I’ve only done 3 yoga workouts so far and they have at least 100 yoga workouts, if not more). I do plan to do Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s new “raw” streaming workouts on YouTube. I am excited about those. I’ll do one of those a week starting in a few weeks. I already have my rotation scheduled out into July, and, right now, I am tentatively planning to do Paul Katami’s 4×4 system the end of July/beginning of August, but who knows if I will follow through with it? For some reason I am feeling very resistant to straying from known workouts that I love. Some kind of comfort thing going on right now. I can’t explain it, but I am going with it. I also changed my mind about the RIPT90 FIT program. I have too many other new workouts to deal with. My interest in that has dwindled. I probably won’t buy it. **I also recently discovered Linda Wooldridge‘s Barlates workouts–both on DVD and streaming. I plan to do a lot more of her workouts.**

4/14/17 UPDATE: Cathe‘s On Demand Workout Blender post is taking me longer than expected (*I just posted it–it was taking too long). I am obsessed. So… things will definitely be slowing down here. I can’t stop creating workout blender workouts and I am even neglecting Cathe Live. I have a stack of new-to-me workouts and programs that I still need to try. It is seriously ridiculous. I have to stop buying them because I have no clue when I will get to them. I’ll be honest–Workout Blender is the best thing ever. I said that about Cathe Live a little over a year ago (and I meant it) and did those workouts almost exclusively for a while. Well, that is what is happening again. I do have a Workout Blender review in the works but it is taking longer to finish (and therefore post) than I expected because I keep creating more and more blender workouts. I can’t stop! It currently looks like I will be posting that review at the end of April (as mentioned above I just ended up just posting it–seems like I’ll never stop creating new blender workouts, so waiting till I do is pointless) then I will try to catch up on the newest Cathe Live workouts. Then, I want to return to all of the (almost 40) blender workouts I have created. I will probably just do those for a while because I love them so much. I’ll mix it up with MetaShred Extreme and Cathe Live, but mostly my wonderful blender workouts. So I can only assume things will slow down a bit here until that gets old and I finally decide to try my new-to-me workouts/programs that are collecting dust.

And what are those? Programs: Paul Katami’s 4×4 System, some Rushfit workouts (I didn’t get the whole program–just 4 of the workouts in the program), JNL Fusion, UFC Fit, Teeter Thunderbell Pro 10, DeltFit Speed Shred, SKOGG kettlebells, P90X3, and Asylum 2. Workouts: 5 of Tracey Mallet’s older workouts, 4 Kelly Coffey-Meyer workouts (3 of her pre-30 Minutes to Fitness workouts and one older 30 Minute to Fitness workout), 2 Erin O’Brien workouts, and one Amy Bento workout. Plus RIPT90 came out with a second program: RIPT90 FIT, which I will order at some point. But like I said, I have no clue when any of that will post. All I want to do right now are the blender workouts I created.

2/26/17 UPDATE: I got through a lot of what I listed below in my last update but not all of it and now I have even more on my To Do list. However, things will be slowing down on this blog for the month of March and the first half of April. The beginning of March I am starting an online fitness program called Rippedism–there will be a post about that once I do all of the workouts in the program. I have also signed up for Cathe On Demand–even tho I own every single workout she has created on DVD. However, there is a good reason I decided to sign up for it–Workout Blender. I have been creating my own individual workouts from Cathe‘s vast library–piecing them together in ways that (I think at least) will create the best possible workouts for my own personal goals. Workout Blender is addictive–especially if you have done all of Cathe’s workouts. I have created over 20 workouts using Workout Blender. Now, I need to do them. As you can see from my blog, I have been pretty busy. Once I do all of my Workout Blender workouts, I plan to do a summary post about Workout Blender. That should be about mid-April. So for the next month and half, I probably won’t be posting much. I may use Sundays to do and review some of the new DVDs I’ve continued to accumulate–more Kelly Coffey-Meyer (hey–she had a New Year’s Day sale and there were still 3 of her workouts I didn’t own) and some older Tracey Mallet workouts I bought used. So those may end up being Sunday workouts over the next month and a half. Mid-April… I don’t know what comes next. I haven’t looked that far into the future. Maybe another round of MetaShred Extreme mixed with my Cathe Blender workouts, maybe one of the many programs I have accumulated, definitely more Cathe Live. But we’ll as the time gets closer.

12/02/16 UPDATE: I have a lot in the works and though I know where I plan to start, I don’t know in what order I will be tackling the rest. First, Cathe‘s newest series should be shipping very soon (Strong & Sweaty). I will be diving into that as soon as I receive it. I am not yet sure exactly how I will approach it since the handbook hasn’t been posted yet. I want to look at the rotation before I decide if I want to follow it or not. Around the same time, I plan to sign up for Daily Burn. I am getting an AppleTV (4th gen) for Christmas which will make streaming even easier for me and I have been wanting to try Bob Harper’s Black Fire ever since he announced it (I was very cranky to learn it is only streamed–no DVDs). So I will be reviewing the entire Black Fire program (that will be my doubles workout since they are all 30 minute workouts). Those are the two definites that will be posting.

I have been in the midst of a metabolic rotation I created. I have actually created two rotations and have followed neither of them closely! But I will post them both. One uses DVDs and Cathe Live and the other is DVDs only. What am I waiting for? Strong & Sweaty of course! I feel certain many if not all of those workouts will fit perfectly into both rotations–but I may just use it for the DVD rotation since Strong & Sweaty may already be similar to a few of the Live workouts. But I won’t know till I try them, so that’s all those two rotations are waiting on.

I also know that for my birthday my husband is getting me BJ Gaddour’s upcoming MetaShred Extreme. It isn’t released until January (my birthday month) so it works out well. However, I will not be starting it immediately. I have plans for it. DeltaFit Speed Shred has been sitting on my shelf for months. So the plan is, start with DeltaFit, do a round of MetaShred 21 and finish it off with MetaShred Extreme. Which means that review won’t post for several months–but DeltaFit should post very early 2017. I also impulse purchased Riptensity. I may work that into the DeltaFit/MetaShred rotation. Not sure yet. But whatever I do, I plan to post the entire rotation since I know a lot of people love the Men’s Health workouts (including me!).

But that’s not all! I have been hoarding again. I bought JNL Fusion. Just because. I got Mark Lauren’s newest workout (Focus 15) half off for Black Friday. He also just came out with a YAYOG 2–bought it of course. I bought another Tracy Mallet workout. And then there are the other workouts/programs I have purchased over the past few years, still sitting on my shelf waiting their turn (SKOGG kettlebells, P90X3, Asylum 2, an Amy Bento workout, two of Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s older workouts, probably more I am forgetting).

Where does that leave Cathe Live? Well… I love Cathe Live, I really do. And like Daily Burn, my Christmas present should make it even easier to stream. But once I start the DeltaFit/MetaShred rotation, I plan to cancel Cathe Live (temporarily of course). No point spending money on something I won’t be doing very often. So those reviews will probably come to a halt for a while. But they will be back! I know I will start missing my Cathe Live workouts.

So that is the plan. Will it all play out the way I want it to? Who knows? I do know I need to stop buying workouts and do the ones I already own (and love). I already have plans this weekend to rearrange my workout DVD library. It is becoming overcrowded again…

9/21/16 UPDATE: Well, things went along as planned for a while. Then I went on vacation (and had a great time) but when I returned, I felt very resistant to doing the rotation I had created. Or at least the first part. The first part of the rotation contained a bunch of new-to-me DVDs that have been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for a while. Every time one would come up on the rotation, I felt this wave of resistance and substituted a familiar Cathe, Cathe Live or Kelly Coffey-Meyer workout. I don’t know when this will end but I feel the need for the comfort of my familiar and well-loved workouts. Now, I have created a metabolic rotation that starts at the beginning of October. It is all familiar (to me) workouts so I am guessing that I will probably follow through with it. If so, and I like it, I will post it to the Rotations page. I still have a growing list of Cathe Lives I want to sample, but again–I am craving the familiar. With Cathe Live that has more to do with having a workout card already created and ready to go. I am even feeling resistant to doing a workout in which I do not already know what (challenging) weight I will be using. Plus, I am feeling burned out on creating workout cards. I’ve been creating a lot of them since I signed up for Cathe Live. It’s getting old and yet it is a necessity to get the most out of my workouts.

This just sounds like a lot of burn out right now, doesn’t it? So, for now I really don’t know what will appear here or when. I’m sure eventually I will start getting that craving for something new. I did pre-order Cathe’s upcoming Strong & Sweaty series, plus Kelly Coffey-Meyer announced upcoming new workouts which I will, of course, order. And I keep looking at B.J. Gaddour‘s DeltFit Speed Shred sitting on shelf… We’ll see I guess!

7/15/16 UDPATE: This weekend I will finish out the 5 week Cathe Live rotation and that will post very soon. I’m sure you can see a ton of streaming reviews have gone up with more to come. Plus, I’ve been bad. As I noted below in the June Update–I’ve been purchasing workout DVDs again. I currently have my workouts scheduled all the way into September–with some holes to fill in. Here is what I plan to do–more Cathe Live. I think I have 12 or 13 new-to-me Cathe Lives planned through to the end of August. Focus T25 will be my doubles workouts starting next week. Once I finish T25 I am doing Livestrong’s Stronger program as my doubles workouts. I bought Jari Love’s new Get Ripped in 6 and scheduled it for August. I’m doing a Tracy Mallet this weekend. Plus, lots more free streaming workouts from Popsugar, BeFit and GymRa. I have discovered new channels I will be sampling from: Live Strong Woman, AngieFitnessTV, Stylecraze Fitness, Body Project, and Shelly Dose. And Even B.J. Gaddour has some free streaming workouts that he did through StreamFITtv! Now, this is what I currently have saved to playlists and scheduled into my workout calendar. However, these are free YouTube workouts. So if I do one and I don’t like it–I will not post a negative review. Here is why; if the first workout I do by them $ucks (in my opinion)–all of the other workouts by this person are deleted from my playlists. I will not try anymore of their workouts. This has already happened with 2 trainers/channels. I tried their workouts, didn’t like them and hit delete. No point in posting about it here. The only time I will post a negative review of a free YouTube workout is if I regularly use their workouts. For instance Popsugar. I love and do a lot of Popsugar workouts, so if I come across one I think stinks–I will mention it here! So if some of the trainers I mentioned above never appear here–well, I probably didn’t dig their workouts.

In the updates below I always mention workouts I’ve bought and still haven’t reviewed. Those are all still on my shelves, waiting their turns and one day they will appear here. However, as I mentioned, I have been bad. I blame it on streaming! Yes, it’s free, but Popsugar’s guest trainers introduce me to new trainers! And I like them a lot! So… I have bought a Tracy Mallet workout and checked out another from the library. I have purchased Christine Bullock’s Evolution 20 program and if her Super Shred drops in price I will be purchasing that, too. I also bought Pop Physique’s Original Butt. That’s not all! I caved and bought B.J. Gaddour’s DeltaFit Speed Shred. I also pre-ordered Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s Amped Up Cardio. I think that’s it for now. It’s a lot. I overwhelm myself. And with the YouTube discoveries…. I just don’t know how to do it all. And do all of my beloved DVDs… Where there is a will…. Right?

6/12/16 UPDATE: Things will be changing a bit for the next month. On Monday I start my Cathe Live only rotation (which will post in 5 weeks). To create that rotation I used only workouts I have already done. So that means there will be no more Cathe Live reviews for the next 5 weeks. However, I do have a list of 10 more Cathe Live workouts I want to sample and I’m sure Cathe will create at least 1-2 more workouts over the next 5 weeks that will entice me. But that does not mean reviews will come to a halt! Not at all. In fact I am jumping on the streaming bandwagon and over the next 5 weeks there will be a lot of free YouTube workout reviews posting. Due to the length of Cathe Live workouts they will be done primarily as add-ons and sometimes as doubles workouts, so all of the workouts I will be reviewing will be 30 minutes or less. The main “channels” I will be pulling from are Popsugar, BeFit, GymRa and Fitness Blender. I will also be reviewing one DVD: Jillian MichaelsKickbox Fastfix. I have had that workout forever. I did it once a long time ago and have never returned to it for some reason. So I will be revisiting and reviewing that workout. Once I finish this 5 week rotation I am not sure what is up next other than some more Cathe Lives. I still have new-to-me workouts on my shelves I bought and haven’t done but for some reason I am not currently motivated to do them. Same goes for SKOGG, Asylum Vol 2 and P90X3. Not sure why, but the motivation just isn’t there for those, either. I am still thinking about doing another round of ChaLean Extreme (it will be my 4th but my first since I started this blog–so I haven’t done it in more than 3 years) and, oddly, lately I have become very nostalgic about my old Firm workouts. So some Firm reviews may pop up–but again, that is more than a month down the road. So that is where I am right now. I am very much looking forward to my Cathe Live rotation starting tomorrow! ***I just won an Ebay auction for Focus T25 Alpha, Beta and Gamma. I have been watching and bidding on this program for more than a year but the bidding always escalates out of my price range. Well–I finally got it for less than my max bid! So that will be reviewed at some point in the future. I can fit that in as doubles workouts, so right now I am planning for T25 to post in August.

3/03/16 UPDATE: I did it. I got through all of the new-to-me workouts on my To Do list. I have also been in rotation creation mode. I created a 12 week rotation that hybrids SKOGG and P90X3 w/ lots of yoga, but I don’t know when I will be doing it. March is a bit of a mish-mosh for me since I have a vacation planned this month. I plan to revisit Hammer & Chisel and Meta Shred, some Kelly Coffey-Meyer favorites, Cathe favorites, barre workouts and lots of Cathe Live. However, starting in April I want to refocus on some of the toughest and, in my opinion, best strength workouts I own. I have created a 10 week rotation and if I like the results, it will get posted on the Rotations page. I have also decided to try really hard to stop buying anymore workouts for a while. So all that will be posting for a while is Cathe Live workouts and workouts I already own but have not been reviewed here.

At some point I really need to stop buying workouts. As much as I love them all–I have too many! And because I need to actually do all of the new ones I buy, I end up neglecting old (or new) favorites. Maybe I’ll try to put a moratorium on purchasing any new workout DVDs for like a year… or at least until Cathe‘s next program/series is released. In fact, I’m thinking about making Cathe and Kelly Coffey-Meyer my only auto-buys from now on.

12/05/15 UPDATE: Round 3 of STS done! Which leads me to the newest type of content I will be adding to this blog—tho it will appear much less frequently than actual workout reviews. And that is workout rotations. I’ve already included rotations with some of my reviews of fitness programs, but since I frequently hybrid things, alter existing rotations or just create my own for whatever reason I have at that time, I decided to add my rotations to my blog/database. I actually write these rotations on paper calendars I print off but I have no good way of organizing them so if I ever want to return to one I particularly like, I lose motivation sorting through years of paper rotation calendars. So if I really like one that I created (or altered) then it will become a blog post and be linked to the Workout Rotation page. So, up at the top next to “About” and “Current & Upcoming,” you will see a new tab “Workout Rotations.”

Another page will be appearing very soon as well. I have subscribed to Cathe Live. This is her streaming service. Every week she films a live workout that she teaches in her gym and uploads it so we can all workout in Cathe’s gym with her—real, live Cathe classes. None of them are available on DVD. There are currently almost 80 live workouts! I am truly overwhelmed. It is not free, of course. I am locked into a year subscription so I plan to sample a lot of these workouts. Reviews will post just like all of my other workout reviews, but they will also be linked under the Cathe Live page. Now, as things change and evolve, DVD workouts may one day become a thing of the past as more trainers go directly to streaming. When and if that happens, the name of that page may change to something else like “Streaming” or something less boring. But I have no plans to sign up for any other streaming service at this point, so right now it is devoted to Cathe.

The latest update from Cathe is that ICE should be shipping in the next few weeks. Not this week and probably not even next week but possibly the week after. So maybe I’ll have it by Christmas. Who knows? But when I do, I plan to start an ICE rotation the following Monday. Soon after, reviews will post.

As I’m sure you noticed from my latest posts I have been compulsively using my public library to sample workouts. Not as good of an idea as I had initially assumed. Why? Because I loved so many of them I just ended up buying them anyway! Not much of a money saver! But it did help me discover lots of new trainers and types of workouts I would never have purchased otherwise. So no regrets. However, that will probably stop (or at least slow down) for a while.

I still have everything listed in the 10/26/15 Update below to work my way through. Plus I purchased Hammer & Chisel the day it was released from Beachbody! So that will be reviewed here. I also purchased Asylum Vol 2. For Christmas, my husband bought me Weider Pink. So there is a lot on my To Do list. It will all eventually appear here, some sooner than others.

10/26/15 UPDATE: I am on my last week of STS Mesocycle #2; so I still have Mesocycle #3 to get through. It has been a great rotation. I made it very glute focused. In fact, in my mind I am calling it my STS Rock Bottoms rotation! I am considering doing a blog post listing my rotation in case anyone is interested–and in case I want to return to it again at some point! So that might appear when I finish this rotation. Here is what I have planned for the next few months. I have discovered the library’s workout DVD section and a whole new world has opened up for me. It contains the type of workouts I am curious about but rarely purchase. So now, I can try them out for free! And I will review them here. For my upcoming STS recovery week I have checked out a yoga workout, some barre workouts and a Tracy Anderson workout. So those will all go up in about 2 weeks. Cathe is still projecting that ICE will ship in late fall. Since I will be finishing STS the beginning of December, I plan to jump right into an ICE rotation–so that review will go up in December. I also pre-ordered Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s newest workouts. I plan to do those along with ICE. Afterwards, I have some new programs I am going to try. SKOGG Kettlebell System, P90X3 and I am pretty sure my husband is getting me Sagi‘s Hammer & Chisel for Christmas (it won’t be released until December). I also purchased Paul Katami‘s Kettlebell Drills, and I still have all of the other new-to-me workouts that have been stacking up, waiting to be tried (Jillian Michaels newest workout, some old but new-to-me Amy Bento and Kelly Coffey-Meyer workouts, a Patrick Goudeau workout and a few others). So that is what the next few months look like for me!

8/24/15 UPDATE: I’ve gotten through a lot of new workout programs recently, as evidenced by all of the new reviews. I have one more review going up by the end of the week. Peak Fit System review will finally go up (that one has been in the works for 3 years now). After that, however, the reviews will slow down again. I am starting my 3rd round of STS and I will be supplementing it with programs/workouts that have already been reviewed: Edge Extreme Bootie 2, Butt Bible, Ultimatum, RIPT90. I still have some new-to-me workouts sitting on my shelf that I haven’t done/reviewed, plus the other programs I did before I started this blog that I still want to review here (P90X & ChaLean Extreme). But those are on hold for a while. I’m sure workouts will appear from time to time (I have Jillian Michael’s newest Killer Arms & Back on pre-order). Oh! And I have Cathe‘s ICE on pre-order. As soon as that arrives I will do those workouts for a recovery week. Once I finish a 3 month rotation of STS, I’m not sure what’s next–maybe another round of Body Beast? Maybe Sagi‘s newest program (Beachbody is calling it Hammer & Chisel) which I will order as soon as available. Maybe Chalean Extreme and P90X. We’ll see what I’m in the mood for when the time comes.

6/22/15 UPDATE: I usually don’t do updates this close together but I won an ebay auction for a fitness program that I am oddly excited about: Lindsi’s Ultimatum. I honestly don’t know why I wanted this fitness program so badly but I do. That doesn’t mean I will be getting to it any quicker than anything else tho. But I now possess it, so it goes on the To Do list. In addition, I bought a few more new workouts by Amy Bento: Cardio Pump Hi/Lo and A-Team Bootcamp. My To Do List is growing! Oh! I also pre-ordered Cathe‘s new series–of course! It’s called ICE which stands for Intermediate Conditioning Extreme. It is not her usual advanced workouts. Which gave me some misgivings at first, but it is Cathe, so of course I am giving it a try. If nothing else, it will function as recovery workouts. Which is fortuitous! Expected ship date is Fall 2015 and in September I start round 3 of STS. I will use ICE as recovery week workouts during STS.

So, how does starting STS factor into my To Do list for trying out and reviewing all of my new workouts? That is a good question because I don’t really know. I have my rotation mapped out all the way up to when I start STS, but I am considering altering the last few weeks before I start STS to do the Pretty Fierce fitness programs and RIPT90. Ultimatum is metabolic weight training which I can do during STS, so are the new Amy Bentos. The rest–I guess we’ll see! ** Just updated my rotation and the plan is to do RIPT90 the end of July, Pretty Fierce the beginning of August followed by Ultimatum at the end of August. The plan is to have them sampled and reviewed before I start STS. We’ll see if it happens that way!

5/08/15 UPDATE: Burn out has set in. Not on working out but on doing new workouts/programs. I still have so much more I want to do! But I need a break. All of these new workouts and programs have introduced me to some really great stuff that I want to spend more time doing. In addition, I pine for my Cathe and Kelly Coffey-Meyer workouts when I have been neglecting them. So I just need to take some time and do primarily workouts that are already reviewed here. I don’t know for how long. Maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months. New reviews will pop up here and there. I know when I receive Kelly’s new workouts I will probably do them pretty quickly. Amy Bento’s Drop Set Strength will be going up this weekend. I may purchase some more Amy Bento workouts and do those. I was blown away by Slo-Mo Strength Challenge and am feeling the need to do it many more times and soon. I also keep looking at her workouts on Amazon… not a good sign. They are starting to clog my wishlist. But for now, I mentally need to focus on favorite workouts and trainers.

3/10/15 Update: Whew! I am on a roll! By the end of this week 3 more reviews should go up: Les Mills Pump, Insanity Asylum Volume 1 and Mark Lauren’s Bodyweight Training. And I have my workout rotations mapped out through June. By the end of June, nearly everything that I own that is relevant (to me) should be reviewed on this blog. If I follow the rotations I created, that is. So far I have been. Once that is complete, there really won’t be much more left to review. However, I still have a few Jari Love workouts I haven’t gotten to. Some yoga workouts I bought and still haven’t done. All my Zuzka workout collections (I have 3 now–Cardio, Strength and Kettlebell). I’ll review those eventually. Other than that it will just be new stuff I purchase. I am considering purchasing Insanity Asylum Volume 2, but have not yet. And may not for a while, maybe never. Maybe I’ll wait until Black Friday. Who knows?

So, what is still to come? Kettlebell Kickboxing: The Body Series and Scorcher, and Iron Core Kettlebell workouts are next on the agenda and will be up by the end of March. Interspersed with those will be Amy Dixon’s new workouts. Then in April I am doing P90X2 + Jillian Michael’s new series BodyShred. I’m pretty excited about that hybrid. I’ll also be doing a the last 3 Jillian workouts I have that I have not reviewed (Yoga Meltdown, Kickbox Fast Fix and Shred-It with Weight). I have ordered Michelle Dozois’s newest Peak 10 workouts and they are on their way (they shipped today). I also plan to return to some of my older programs that I haven’t done in a few years and review them: ChaLean Extreme, P90X and Peak Fit Challenge. And finally, I have some other workouts I’ve purchased but not yet done—I will be squeezing those in here and there: Annie Mair’s Life Force, Amy Bento’s Slo-Mo and Drop Sets, Patrick Goudeau’s Hardwork Conditioning 24/7 and two of Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s old workouts (pre-30 Minutes to Fitness). And speaking of Kelly Coffey-Meyer, she just announced she has two more workouts coming out. So obviously I will be buying those. And finally, my husband purchased P90 for himself. I may review that as well. I haven’t decided yet on that one.

I’m actually pretty excited to finally have this completed (well, by the end of June that is). I have created a little “plug in” rotation and with all of my relevant workouts finally reviewed with descriptions at my fingertips, it will make it that much easier for me to create rotations.

As a side note—what do I mean by “relevant”? Relevant are workouts that I keep on the shelves in my workout room and consider intense enough to spend time doing. I have a large box in my closet full of workouts I no longer do and have no plans to do… for now. An enormous collection of Firm workouts, a sizeable collection of Tae Bo workouts and others. I can’t force myself to get rid of them because, well, I am 44 years old and not getting any younger. One day I may not be able to do all of the workouts I now gravitate to. When I was in a terrible accident in 2009 I did have to rehabilitate using workouts such as Leslie Sansone and my old Firms. I cannot part with them out of fear they may one day be needed again. Either due to an injury or health reasons–or just old age. I have no plans to ever stop working out, but if I have to take it down a notch, then I still have the oldies. So who knows? Maybe one day they will be included here, too.

1/2/15 Update: It’s a new year! And I have been getting through a lot of my new workouts, but still have a lot to go. I am loving Cathe‘s new Ripped with HIIT series so much that it’s hard for me to want to do anything else. But I am also crazy about Mark Lauren‘s workouts. I want to incorporate more of his amazing body weight workouts into my regular rotations. And then there are all the other new workouts I now own and want to try. It’s overwhelming! So what is on the agenda for the coming year? Right now I am continuing doing Ripped with HIIT workouts but incorporating other workouts into my rotation. The next review to go up will be Les Mills Combat. Then I will be doing my new Mark Lauren workouts (and adding EFX back into my rotation, too). Today is my birthday and my husband gave me Insanity Max:30, which I am very excited about. So the next planned rotation for February is Tapout XT 1 & 2 + Max:30. I still have all of the workouts listed below in my 9/15/14 update to do, and in addition I got Les Mills Pump at Beachbody’s Black Friday sale which I have been wanting forever but it was so expensive (until Black Friday that is! Great sale!). So I can’t wait to try that. And Jillian Michaels’ new program Body Shred just came out! I must have it! It looks awesome. But, since I still have so much to get through I plan to purchase that closer to summer.

9/15/14 Update: I recently made an unexpected purchase. Beachbody lowered the price of Body Beast ($40—which is cheap for a Beach Body product) so I bought it. It seemed to open a doorway to wanting to purchase “systems” again. I am currently doing the Body Beast rotation (with my own tweaks of course) and will post a review when it is complete (I’m in my 4th week and plan to do 12 weeks). In addition, I purchased Weider Ruthless (twenty 20 minute body weight only workouts), PiYo (Chalene Johnson’s new system—another Beachbody product) and Tapout XT 1 and 2.I plan to do Weider Ruthless while doing Body Beast, so both of those reviews will be posted in the next few months. In addition, I still plan to do P90X2 and Asylum. I really, really do plan to! In fact, they were next on my list until Body Beast went on sale, and well, I couldn’t resist that one. But now that I have purchased all of these other ones… who knows what will be next in line? (**10/26/14 update: I’ve now also purchased Les Mills Combat and two Kettle Bell kickboxing series (Scorcher and The Body Series) + some more Patrick Goudeau–so lots more coming!)

I have also been buying more workouts than those listed above (Big Surprise, right?). In addition to pre-ordering Cathe’s upcoming new series, Kelly Coffey-Meyer has two new workouts coming out which I have pre-ordered. I’ve also purchased a few of her older (non-30 Minutes to Fitness) workouts, but have not yet done them. Let’s see… Michele Dozois has new workouts coming out which I will pre-order as soon as they are available. Also, from listening to Jillian Michaels podcast, she has another program coming out (not individual workout(s)). I believe she called it the next level of Body Revolution? But I can’t remember and it’s been like a month or more since I listened to the podcast. I can find nothing about it online tho. She has gym classes called Body Shred and I think that is what this program is also called. But I am not positive. I will, of course, order that the moment it is available. I also bought another Anni Mairs workout. What can I say? I am a glutton for punishment. Fierce Force was pretty awesome and intense. I have been doing more yoga and purchased a couple more yoga DVDs—reviews of those will be posting sooner than everything else since I am incorporating a lot of flexibility into my Body Beast Rotation. And finally, I have Zuzka’s cardio and her strength series workouts (each series has 12 workouts). So clearly, I have a lot to get through. They will all be posted eventually.

7/01/14 Update: I think it is about to happen–the reviews are slowing to a crawl, so I may have to start considering some new content. My wrist is healed, so I am back lifting heavy. I’ve gone through most (not all) of my new-to-me workout DVDs and even tho I still have a lot of older ones on my shelf un-reviewed, I am currently creating my rotations from workouts I have already reviewed here. In addition, in my non-workout life, I am about to start working some overtime, so that cuts out my ability to do doubles and also restricts my workouts to one hour a day M-F. So I have to be very particular about what I am doing. When I start doing doubles again (probably in about a month) I have some new ones I plan to try and review–given to me by a reader of this blog (thanks Lisa!) Annie Mairs Fierce Force and Zuzka/Zcut Power Cardio Series. And the most exciting news–Cathe is coming out with more workouts and they seem like exactly what I am looking for! The series is called Ripped W/ HIIT; it is heavy weight training done circuit style with HIITs. I can’t wait! She just announced it so it is months and months away from being in my greedy hands, but I of course pre-ordered it the moment I was able to! I am very excited.

So, bottom line, things will probably slow down here but I will be thinking of other types of content to write about.

4/13/14 Update: Following Cathe’s Bodybuilding rotation didn’t go as I’d planned, so I’ve been doing a lot of different of workouts lately. I got through all 3 mesocycles of STS again, but when I started pyramiding back down through the mesocycles, I had to stop in Mesocycle 2 due to a wrist injury. I, of course, didn’t stop lifting weights, I just had to stop lifting so heavy. As you can see by the reviews from the past few months this injury has permitted me to sample a lot of new workouts. In fact, I am just about out of “new-to-me” workouts… for now that is. (I think I have one Tonique left and one Patrick Goudeau left to try–at the time of this writing that is). It’s like a disease and I still have a wishlist, though I have whittled it down significantly in the past 6 months. Right now I am just having fun doing my new workouts plus revisiting my favorite older workouts. So what is coming? Right now I have so many favorite workouts that I am having a hard time fitting in everything I want to do. Too much of a good thing I guess. But I would like to finally finish reviewing all of my Jari Love and Michelle Dozois workouts. And then finally do P90X2 and Asylum. After that, I just don’t know anymore. I have no plans to buy any new “programs” and other than acquiring a few more workouts from some of my new favorite trainers (I have several Paul Katami and Patrick Goudeau workouts on my wishlist, plus both Toby Massenburg and Susan Chung both have one remaining workout DVD I have not yet purchased.), I will probably stick to just purchasing the new releases from my favorite trainers: Cathe, Kelly Coffey-Meyer, Jari Love, Jillian Michaels, Michelle Dozois, Bob Harper and Ilaria Montagnani. So maybe one day the reviews will slow down to a crawl.

1/3/14 Update: I’ve mentioned it before but I have to say it again—I have a problem. You’d think, at some point, I would stop buying workout DVDs. But that is not the case at all. In the past week I have purchased 10. TEN. WTF is wrong with me? So, that leads me to what’s coming in the near future. I am still doing Cathe’s bodybuilding rotation. In fact, I am finishing up Mesocycle 2 of STS this week. This time when I do Mesocycle 3 I am doing Squat Rack Legs, so the review of those workouts will finally be posted (probably the first week of February). In spite of the fact I have accumulated so many new workout DVDs (both recently and over the past few months), I don’t have time to do all of them. But I will be working them into my STS/bodybuilding rotation as I can. I plan to do Jari Love’s newest workout this weekend. Then during Mesocycle 3 I plan to use Amy Dixon’s newest Breathless Body HIIT workout (HIIT it Big!) and Mindy Mylrea’s Tabata with Toys. In addition to the new workouts mentioned in my last update (scroll down) that have not yet been reviewed, I have even more! Two of Jillian Micheal’s new workouts, two Kelly Coffey-Meyer workouts, two Toby Massenburg workouts, yet another Mindy Mylrea HIIT workout, a Susan Chung workout and Amy Dixon’s newest workouts (the HIIT mentioned above and a kettlebell workout). And then of course I have scores of older workouts that I love and yet still haven’t reviewed by Jillian Michaels, Jari Love, Michelle Dozois, Bob Harper and more. Just listing all of that leaves me scratching my head, wondering why I keep purchasing these workouts. I can only attribute it to what I am now calling “exercise DVD ADHD”—I seem to constantly need new and interesting challenges. It’s not even that I lose interest in a trainer or series, but there are new things always on the horizon, calling to me. Oddly, the old favorites are always calling to me, too. In fact, I have been thinking about (and missing) Rip:60 for a while–so I am doing Rip:60 workouts next week for my recovery week.

9/11/13 Update: I have completed STS! I won’t go on about my love for that program here—you can just read the Wrap Up if you are interested. But the completion of it leads to… what is next for this blog? That is a good question. I know what’s next for me, but as for what is next for this blog…. I can only say in the short term.

Next week I am starting Cathe’s Rock Bottoms rotation and doing it until November. Starting November 4 I am doing Cathe’s bodybuilding rotation. I will be modifying both of these rotations but I am sticking with the structure and core of them. The majority of the workouts in these rotations have been reviewed already. However, Cathe’s newest workouts should be shipped by the end of this month. I, of course, I have them pre-ordered, so I will incorporate them into her Rock Bottoms rotation and review them. In addition, I have a lot of new workouts that I still haven’t even done. Ilaria’sAtletica2 & 3, Mindy Mylrea’s Tabata with Toys, 10 Minute Solution HIIT, ZCut Power Cardio Series, Jillian Michaels’ Hard Body, Mike Donavanik’s Extreme Burn, Patrick Goudeau’s Lean Hot Body and Paul Katami’s Burn & Build.

Yes, I have a problem. Why I continue to purchase new workouts is a mystery when I constantly find myself gravitating back to my Cathe workouts every time I venture away from them. But there it is. They intrigued me so I purchased them. And now they are waiting to be tried. In addition, if you scroll down to earlier updates you will see I still have tons of other workouts and programs I still haven’t reviewed!

Here is the plan. Since I am modifying Cathe’s rotations for my own use, I will be inserting the afore mentioned new workouts here and there (as well as old favorites), and when I do, the reviews will post. Since I am starting some pretty focused rotations (Rock Bottoms for your glutes/legs and a very long body building rotation) I may actually start writing some of the informational articles I mentioned in an earlier update.

So that is the current plan!

5/28/13 Update: Just finished STS Mesocycle 1 and am in the middle of the recovery week. Mesocycle 2 starts next week. I will be completing the full 5.5 months of STS, as planned, but the unthinkable is starting to happen. I am missing some of my old favorite workouts. So I am adding them back into my STS rotations. Don’t misunderstand—I still adore all of my Cathe workouts, but I also miss some of the others I loved so much. Many of them have already been reviewed here, so even though I am doing workouts by other trainers, a ton of new reviews won’t be posted. But some will! Here is the current plan (remember tho, my rotations are always fluid and I sometimes redo an entire month+ of rotation calendar(s) on a whim).

I will be continuing on with STS for my main strength work. For cardio workouts I’ll be doing a combination of Cathe workouts plus other favorites: Michelle Dozois Peak 10 workouts, Amy Dixon’s Breathless Body workouts, Ilaria Montagnani’s kickboxing workouts and TurboFire workouts. These have all been reviewed; however, Michelle Dozios has come out with two new Peak 10 workouts and I have pre-ordered them. So they will be reviewed very soon after I receive them. Also, I am really jonesing for my Bob Harper workouts. My plans for Mesocycle 2 workouts (that are outside of the main strength workouts, that is) has been changing. Monday, after doing Bob’s Cardio Conditioning, I decided to do some more of my Bob workouts on Saturdays. I was wanting to do metabolic weight training workouts on Saturdays anyway and even Bob’s strength workouts are fast paced and have a lot of cardio—so they also function as metabolic weight training. So I have plans to soon be posting lots of Bob Harper workouts.

When I complete STS, I have plans to do a month long rotation of Cathe’s—a low impact rotation, so there will be no new workouts posted during that time period. But afterwards, I have developed a calendar (we’ll see if I still want to do it when the time comes), that will incorporate a lot of Michelle Dozois so I can finally finish reviewing her PeakFit System and post the review, several of her other workouts I love and—finally!—Asylum and P90X2. Keep in mind that by this time Cathe’s new workouts that I’ve pre-ordered will probably have arrived, so I will be doing (and reviewing) those as well.

If it all plays out as planned, it looks like there will be quite a few new reviews by different trainers going up this year.

3/20/13 Update:Xtrain reviews are now up. I start STS on April 1, so reviews of the 41 STS workouts will also be going up. Cathe announced more workouts coming out this summer, all of which I’ve already pre-ordered. I broke down and ordered Ride–the Xtrain spinning workout. Plus, I bought some really old Cathe step workouts. So, all of that will be reviewed at some point. I am starting to have some interest in things outside of Cathe workouts–but not enough at this point to purchase them. However, what I am considering is Les Mills Pump, Tapout XT & 2 and Les Mills Combat, in that order. None of them are cheap and none of them can be done at the same time as STS, so maybe sometime later this year. I still need to do P90X2 and Asylum—both of which are collecting dust. I got them right before I discovered Cathe, so haven’t I bothered to do a single workout from either program yet. One day….. but Cathe has so many rotations using her massive collection of workouts! Every time I plan to venture outside of my Cathe collection I renege and end up just doing a Cathe workout. But that is the forecast for the next 6 months.

12/31/12 Update: At this point I can only guarantee a few things will appear on this blog: reviews of Xtrain workouts and a review of STS. I’m leaving my last update below because I’m not getting rid of any of my workouts. I’m just going through a really long “phase” right now. All I want to do are Cathe workouts. I have zero interest in workouts by any other trainer. Which is really weird, to be honest. Before I discovered Cathe workouts, I was always on the look out for something new and exciting and intense. In fact, I seemed to be in the process of accumulating every program Beachbody ever created. But then I discovered Cathe workouts and lost interest in every other trainer.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t get burned out on my enormous library of Cathe workouts. And even if I don’t get burned out on Cathe workouts, it doesn’t mean I won’t one day want to start mixing up my workout rotations with some old (or new!) favorites. For instance, Jari Love just came out with a new workout and Ilaria Montagnani came out with FIVE new workouts! It kind of surprises me I’m not interested in them. But I’m not. Maybe one day I will be again. Who knows? Until then, I can only guarantee reviews for Xtrain and STS.

9/7/12 Update: I’ve posted a lot of reviews since I started this blog. The reviews are very useful for me. As I mentioned in About, the main purpose of this blog is to help me keep my workouts straight. You might be surprised to learn that in spite of the many workouts already posted, it has barely scraped the surface of what I own. I do, however, plan to slow down on accumulating more workouts.

Anyone who checks this blog out can see that I have recently become obsessed with Cathe workouts. So much so that I don’t want to do anything else. Which for now is fine. She has a vast library of workouts and I have hoarded accumulated a majority of them. And I plan to do every single one of them and post a review. But at some point, I will reach the end. Yes, I will throw in other workouts (by other trainers) that I own to mix things up and review the ones I haven’t yet reviewed. But I want to spend the majority of my time doing my Cathe workouts. So there will come a time when the reviews will slow down significantly.

That made me wonder—should I continue to blog? This blog is essentially a workout review blog/personal database of my workout library. So I would be changing the nature of the blog. But there are a lot of fitness topics I would like to explore further like HIIT training, muscle confusion, full body workouts vs split routines, overtraining—and many, many more. So look for that in the future. I’ll start mixing it up–workout reviews and informational articles.

What is still to come workout-wise? Lots and lots of Cathe. I am moving into her split routines, so that will be the focus over the next month or so. I have also pre-ordered her Xtrain, so as soon as that arrives I plan to do those. I have also recently acquired Cathe’s STS. I’m pretty excited about that program but it is in depth and comprehensive—plus it is a 90 day program that requires a lot of equipment I still need to acquire. So, though that will be posted eventually, not in the near future.

Programs: I’m still working on the review of Michelle Dozois Peak Fit Challenge program. I have a few more of the strength workouts to do before I can post that one. I have also done P90X and P90X+ in the past. P90X+ review will be posting soon. As for P90X… well, I’m not sure when that one will post. I will have to go through and do all of those workouts again to review them and, as you read above, I have other workouts I am focused on. In the same vein, I have also done ChaLean Extreme multiple times. I will have to do all of the workouts in that program again as well–but one day, it too will post. I also own P90X2 and Asylum, but haven’t done either of them yet. When I do them, I probably won’t do them program style; however, I will post the review of the workouts as a program, so those are two more that will take some time to finally post.

Individual Workouts:Cathe, obviously. Plus my favorite trainers: Jari Love, Michelle Dozois, Jillian Michaels (not Biggest Loser workouts), Bob Harper (not Biggest Loser workouts) and Ilaria Montagnani. Of the ones listed I own the majority of their workouts. Since they are individual workouts, there is a greater chance that I will throw one of those into the Cathe mix every so often to mix things up. I also own a massive collection of Firm workouts and even though I don’t do them very often anymore, I get nostalgic sometimes. So those will pop up every so often. Finally, I have many other workout DVDs—yes, there are more! Tae Bo, Shape, Amy Dixon and more. So who knows what may appear one day.

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108 thoughts on “Current & Upcoming”

Bummer about your upcoming surgery, but hopefully you’ll be back in the groove soon. I’ve just started exploring your blog, and am really enjoying your reviews, as I do workout DVD reviews on my site, as well (not nearly as frequently as you do, though!).

What are your thoughts so far on Mark Lauren’s 90-Day Challenge? Is it doable for an intermediate exerciser?

I am really enjoying Mark’s 90 Day Challenge. It is appropriate for beginner to advanced exercisers. He has 3 levels. Beginners start in level 1 and once you master level 1, move up to level 2 which is intermediate. I started in Level 1 and I am currently in Level 2, which is challenging me. I plan to stay in Level 2 a few more weeks before moving up to level 3. So far it is doing good job rebuilding my fitness level.

Have enjoyed surfing your site for quite a while. Cancer is such a churn of emotions and body changes. So glad to read that things are looking up. Good thoughts to you and your family and friends. Thanks again for your reviews etc. Continuing to beat myself up in many new ways, thanks? yeah!

Thank you so much! I am working on the Workout Types page, a little each day. After completing the longer lists, it will go faster. The cardio workout lists is taking me forever! I have reviewed a lot of cardio workouts!

Hi! I was just thinking about you and hoping that your surgery went well and that you are on your way to recovery. I know I speak for everyone when I say we are so appreciative of your blog and all the effort that goes into it! Yours is the only blog that has its own shortcut on my desktop! That goes to show you how much I visit! Wishing you the best and I hope you are back soon!

So great that you are back and doing well! You are amazing and you must be so glad it’s over. Walking around the block isn’t so bad, especially if the weather is nice, but before you know it you’ll be back to those tough workouts. I’m really excited about the new look for the blog. Perfect time to work on it while you rehab. Take care of yourself!

I don’t know you personally. That said, I’ve briefly come across your footprints in Cathe’s forum and your blog.

I am highly impressed by your honesty, dedication and courage, which again conveys beautifully in between your written lines.

I am a scientist by trade from the Millennial generation that shuns away from social media sites. Most times, I train in a gym setting and resort to Cathe’s workouts at home.

Being born in the family of physicians, I have always been made aware of exercise-induced hormesis (adequate dose, that is – not polar extremes) in physical well-being (which also carries over to mental well-being) as well as the effects on the inhibition of the phosphatidylinositol-3-kinase (PI3K), protein kinase B, rapamycin (mTOR) signaling.

My utmost best of best wishes to you – stronger and better every moment of every day! 🙂

Thank you so much Ann! I had to google some of the terms in your post. But after reading about hormesis, I definitely believe that regular exercise has gotten me through cancer treatment, and will help me recover better from the upcoming last (and hopefully final!) phase of this journey.

I normally never place comments on this website and I have been a long time lurker but wanted let you know that I’m sending prayers for you as you heal and I also wanted to thank you for taking the time to review all of these dvds. Because of you I’ve definitely purchased and enjoyed so many workouts.. I’m sending positive vibes your way and pray for a speedy and healthy recovery…….

Hi, I just wanted to say how much I love your blog and how valuable your reviews are. I am so glad that you are feeling better now and really getting back into doing the things you love. You are a true inspiration.
I hope you like the new Cathe series – I did – as with the right weights they were really effective and fun too! Someone in Cathe’s Online Forum posted a link to a really detailed review of the series and I found this really helpful to prepare for the workouts – the link was https://www.fitnessmystyle.com/recent-posts/your-ultimate-guide-to-cathe-new-lite-workout-series – in case you it’s useful for you too.

I just read your “Current & Upcoming” update. I do not know how you feel about people without intimate knowledge of your condition offering advice, but I would like to suggest that you check out a video on Youtube by a poster who uses the name “What I’ve Learned.” His videos are all rather short, about 15 minutes, and all are entertaining. The one I have in mind is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKfR6bAXr-c. If you do not care to watch the entire thing, please go to the 10-minute mark and go from there. There are several videos, by others, dealing with cancer and water-fasting. Of course, there are written articles elsewhere, including the medical literature. Fasting for cancer is a VERY personal decision. I mention it only in case you have not considered it. I have not had cancer and cannot say with certainty that this is the path I would choose. Best of luck to you. I want your blog to continue for a long time.

Just read your 11/16/18 update. It makes me happy that you are doing well and feeling so ‘chipper.’ Funny thing — I don’t know what you look like, or what your name is, but you just seem so nice that I worry about you and am hoping for the best for you. It probably won’t be long before you are doing Chalene Johnson’s Drench again. By that time, perhaps even I will be getting through it, though I doubt it. Best regards.

Thank you! And thank you for the update! I will have to check it out. It will be a while before I can do Rippedism again but it was such a great program I definitely want to return to it when my fitness level increases.

I am re-starting working out after a hiatus, and am back to ICE, KCM metabolic videos, and shorter videos in my collection i didn’t think I’d use until I was much older! I haven’t been following you during my hiatus until then, and was stunned to find out about your illness 😦 I have quite a few friends who have gone through breast cancer and chemo, from just radio and chemo to radio and LOTS of chemo, taking lymph nodes, and mastectomy. Everyone is different, but health and activity level prior definitely is an indicator of what can be expected to be optimally reclaimed after. My one friend who was on the ‘gentler’ treatment size had to drop from double cycling centuries to plain centuries (her body couldn’t handle the exhaustion/stress and She ended up in the hospital after an until then unexpected autoimmune Hashimoto’s attack. She seems stable for now since she dialed it down). She mostly did Yoga and cycling classes/cycling trainer at home during treatment. But cycling a century is not slouching it at 47! My friend who had aggressive treatment was not active before and is having more issues with stamina a few years out. I am sad to hear you are going through this, but feel confident that with your pre-existing conditioning and workout plans you will recover to your best you, it just might take a while. A whole lot of us out here in cyberspace are following your story and praying for you!

Thank you so much for your prayers and well wishes. My stamina has definitely decreased, but I can still do a lot. I know when I talk to other people at my office who have undergone chemo, they did mot even come in to work and are surprised I show up! I think exercising has something to do with it. I really do!

First and foremost, (1) I wish you the best, easiest and most complete recovery, and (2) thank you for all the reviews you’ve done over the years. Yours is the first site I check when I want to know anything about a workout video. (3) I’m an old Firm Believer too, having started in 1998 with FIRM Basics, and I even used to belong to the Firm YaYas group. I’ve since moved on to Cathe although, at age 62 now, I do modify quite a bit and have never been able to “get” the step choreography (so I follow as well as I can and then do my own thing when I get lost). As an aside, it’s nice to see Cathe making more of the “intermediate” stuff for her aging fan base! LOL But I’ve always toyed with the idea of going back to the old FIRMs for a spell just to see what they’d do for me, since I have dozens of them. It will be interesting to follow along with your experience to see how it goes. When the winters get cold and ugly here in northern Illinois and the basement workout room is my only option, varying 4-week rotations make it seem more like fun and less like “I’m doing this because I’m waiting for spring.” An oldies-but-goodies rotation with the FIRM and some other stuff might be just the ticket for some real variety. Thanks again!

Thank you so much! Me, too–over the years I frequently looked back at my Firm days with nostalgia and toyed with the idea of dragging them out of the closet. I am really, really enjoying Firming it up again. Oddly, right now, I do not miss Cathe or the other advanced trainers I did pre-cancer. I know I will eventually, but I’m going to stick with the Firm until I get tired of it or it seems too easy. It feels like going home right now! I think you should do a Firm rotation. Since you are a Cathelete you can lift heavier than you did back when you started with the Firm. Even receiving chemo I am lifting heavier weights when I do the Firm now than when I did it 10+ years ago. So I feel like I am still getting excellent workouts even if it isn’t Cathe level. Another thing I enjoy is the lower impact cardio. There is still jumping and high impact, but nothing like Cathe’s plyo. I’ll get back to that eventually, but for now, The Firm is my speed!

I’ve been a long time follower and just now read what you have been going through. I’m so sorry to hear. You have been an inspiration to me with your dedication to fitness no matter what life throws at us! Look forward to hearing more from you. May God continue to heal you!

I read your blog all the time and I look at the workout reviews and did not see what you have been going through until today. I just want to say you are such an inspiration! I am also in my mid forties and haven’t gone through what you have, but I am finding that I need to lower my intensity as I keep injuring myself. I think I will have to permanently put away some of Cathe’s hardest workouts which makes me a little sad. Thank you for continuing to post your workouts and share your knowledge. I look forward to seeing your reviews on lower impact workouts. Hugs

Thanks Cara! I am actually planning to create a page that will list lower impact/rehabilitation appropriate workouts so that people with limitations have a large choice of workouts they can choose from. No reason not to get a great workout even if you issues you are dealing with. I plan to list all kinds of workouts as I do them–DVD, YouTube, Cathe Live, etc. So once I get it up it will be a good place to reference for lower impact workouts.

I just wanted to say I found your blog recently and had been totally in aw e of your wonderful reviews and breakdowns. They’ve been invaluable to me as I try to get back on the fitness train. I’m so sorry to read about your diagnosis but I believe your healthy lifestyle and obvious determination will stand you in good stead. I wish you all the best for your recovery.

I haven’t been following you for that long but I have thoroughly enjoyed your posts! I am so sorry that you have this tough road ahead of you but truly believe you will totally beat this thing! You will remain in my prayers until we get the post we’ll all look forward to stating that you are CANCER FREE! God bless!

I just read your latest update and wanted to let you know that you are still in my prayers. You are so amazingly strong! Thanking God today that you have made it thru the radiation and praying you are on the upswing of this battle; you are truly an inspiration.

Hi! I’ve been following you from Italy since last year ’cause I feel really like you in many ways (age, attitude, never been in a gym etc.) and I adore Cathe. I’ve just finished talking to a close relative of mine about her recent mastectomy and now I read about you! Wordless. I hope you dont’ mind if I transcript an extract of a recent letter to Oxygen magazine from this girl REBECCA (dec. 17 issue), not as an example in itself (everyone is different exp. in this situation), but for the meaning of strenght and positive thinking; I whish you ALL THE BEST!
“LETTERS
The REAL Definition of Strength
Your Editor’s Note in the September/October 2017 issue got me thinking._In the note, you talk about the definition of “strength,” and I have had to completely re-examine that over the past two years due to my diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer._ When I was diagnosed in November 2015, I was in the best athletic shape I had ever been in._I worked at the YMCA, I attended Spin classes, master swim classes, and “beast mode” classes, and I competed in triathlons, road races and Spartan races. The diagnosis shook me to my core because it just didn’t make sense._How could I have cancer?
In December 2015, I started 20 weeks of chemotherapy._The first eight weeks consisted of four rounds of two powerful drugs._I would go to my infusion, my husband would drive me home, and immediately I would go out for a walk._I was pretty out of it on those walks, but I knew it was my only chance to be up and active for about the next five days because the chemo drugs hit the body pretty hard._Once the initial five days passed, I’d be back in the gym._I had to be very careful of the chemo port in my chest, and I had to take things slowly because I’d get dizzy when I lifted._But I kept at it._
My second part of chemo …. I would go to my infusion, then literally stumble into the gym, sit on a Spin bike with my friend beside me in case I fell off, and I would make my legs turn.Sometimes I would cry, other times I would just be completely out of it, but always I would go. I also returned to racing triathlons.
It was during chemotherapy that I began to re-evaluate what “strength” was._Before my diagnosis, I was focused on building physical strength._Now I realized that strength wasn’t only about how much weight I could move, but it was also about the fact that I could stumble into the gym and make my body move at all._Nothing I did was at the same intensity or speed, but I kept going.And the strength it took to do that is beyond anything I could have imagined….. It’s been nine months since I completed the radiation, and in that time, I was able to do three half marathons, seven triathlons and a multitude of other races. I also became a NASM-certified personal trainer. Exercising and racing kept me going through one of the toughest times of my life.
Four weeks ago, I had my final reconstruction surgery, and I am hoping to be cleared to start racing again in a few weeks. I am exercising even now — mostly Spinning and stability exercises (nothing with impact yet and no weights). During the double mastectomy, I had lymph nodes taken out, so I most likely will not be able to lift heavy weights again. I’d be putting myself at risk for lymphedema. But my strength lies in showing up, in continuing to train every day …., I am incredibly thankful that I am able to do the things I can. And “strength” has a whole new meaning for me!— REBECCA, VIA EMAIL”.

Wow. Thank you so much for sharing that letter. It has brought tears to my eyes. Though everyone’s treatment and recovery is different, her treartment sounds like what they outlined for me–mastectomy, 5-6 months of chemo, radiation then once the radiation is complete, I have to wait 6 months then they do reconstruction. They are also taking lymph nodes during the mastectomy (I don’t know yet if it is single or double mastectomy; they only found cancer in my right breast but they did gentic testing–the results will be in before the surgery and that will determine whether they take both breasts or just the right). Anyway, it sounds like what I will be going through over the next year. It is so good to read how she handled it and still came out on top–stronger in spirit. Thank you so much for posting this. It is exactly what I needed this morning.

You are such a strong strong woman!! You will persevere. I know how scared you are, I went through this with my mother. She had a right mastectomy, but with time and a lot of patience you will recover to your fullest. Remember in your feel-sorry-for-yourself days, you are entitled. Go with it. It will not last. Then get up, dust yourself off and be the warrior that you are. I wish you so much luck and speedy recovery. Can’t wait to hear about your journey when you get to the other side of it.

thank you for your kind reply! It brought tears to me too; I really wasn’t sure whether to share it with you and I’m so happy that you appreciate…. Rebecca’s absolutely right and I’m sure you’ll come through this “stronger” and even more motivated. Take your time and be positive! We all cheer on you! A HUGE HUGE HUG from this side of Atlantic! D

Thanks for the link! I signed up for the newsletter. I’m double I will buy it right away tho. I want to get the first one first. And I guess the add ons are #2? (I have two–Boost Metabolism + Muscle and Gentle Yoga.) I want to get the rest in that series. So it will probably be a while before I get #3.

Hi, I read on your Blog that you have Jessicas dvds in your wish list on amazon. During Christmas, Jessica ususally discounts her dvds, which also includes her downloads. I like downloads, takes up less space. She is coming out with Walk Strong Version 3 before the end of this year. Thought you might be interested. Love Your Blog 🙂

Hi, first of all I want to say thank you for your time and effort. I love your blog, it’s so informative. Keep them coming. I love to workout, but have to keep it low impact. I also love barre workouts, but find that my lower back hurts when I do them. I have lower back problems anyway, so I have to be careful. Can you recommend some strength workouts where my heart rate will go up? No jumping for me 🙂 Thanks again!

Hi Linda! I have just discovered Jessica Smith and she has a lot of excellent strength workouts that get your heart rate elevated. And she shows modifications for the majority of the exercises in case you have any issues. Most of her workouts are free on YouTube (here are the ones I have reviewed so far and here is her YouTube Channel). And she also has a lot of DVDs. I have done, reviewed (and loved) one that is a very intense strength training workout: Boost Metabolism + Muscle. Linda Wooldridge also creates some low impact but intense workouts. Her Quick Fix Series (I have reviewed them all; they are free on YouTube plus you can also buy them from Amazon on DVD). Her Full Body HIIT Series also has some great low impact and intense strength work. Those workouts are also available on YouTube for free and on DVD on Amazon. Then there is Kelly Coffey-Meyer. I just did her Cardio Pump this past week and the “Pump” (strength training part) really got my heart rate elevated.

Hi, I´d like to recommend few other great youtube channels that you may like. I am a long time silent follower of your page and have always found so many great recommendations, so I hope you may enjoy some of mine as well. My current favorites are Fit Body by Julia (she has TONS of amazing workouts, strength, cardio, crossfit etc.), Michele Lumadue (super hard, long workouts), Melissa Ioja (no new uploads on youtube, but still posts one live workout a week on her facebook page), Bodyrock´s Lisa Marie (again not too active on youtube anymore, but posts 5 new live workouts a week on Bodyrock facebook page), Velvet Hammer Fitness, Christine Salus, Fitness with PJ, Tracy Steen, Heather Babula, New day 4 Fitness, Rumiana Ilieva…. I could probably think of dozens more, but don´t want to get too annoying with my obsession 🙂

Hi Lena! thanks for all of the recommendations! I follow Fit Body by Julia on YouTube. Her workouts do look tough. I have been planning to try her workouts for a while but just haven’t gotten around to it yet. I know the first on my list to try of hers is her PHA workout. I also follow Christine Salus and have saved a lot of her workouts to playlists, but haven’t gotten around to any of those either!

But I haven’t heard of any of the others, so thank you for the recommendations. I will look into them. I do have my rotation mapped out through the end of September but now I think I will definitely be fitting Julia’s PHA workout into my October rotation. I have been wanting to try it for a long time–I should just do it!

Hi, I noticed you don’t have TheGymBox listed. I wasn’t sure if you knew about it. There are some classes available for free on YouTube or if you have Amazon Prime. I think it’s $10 a month but I have just done the freebies so far. https://thegymbox.com/app/

I have JNL fusion also. I bought it off eBay last year. I think you will enjoy some of the workouts more than others. They are only 30 mins.or less so they would work well for doubles. Warning though some of her background exercisers are very “look at me” and quite showy. A few in particular drove me nuts. There is one guy who lifts less weight during biceps curls than I do! I look forward to when you get to the those and let us know what you think.

I also cancel Cathe Live from time to time when I know I’ll be doing another rotation for a month or so.

I’ve said it before but this blog is my go to for all things DVD/Streaming related. Your reviews are spot on and so well thought out! I’m also interested in trying some of your rotations. Thank you so much for putting this out there. It’s truly an amazing source of info.😄

that’s why I bought it–I saw it really cheap in ebay. When I looked it on Amazon it was more expensive but then after I bought it off ebay Amazon sent me an email and the price had been reduced. I still got it cheaper off ebay but it was used and did not come with anything but the workouts. I don’t know when I am doing it tho. I went a little crazy at the beginning of Jan. I have to do another moratorium. I have purchased ridiculous amount of new-to-me workouts.

I’m so glad my blog is helpful. I’m so glad I created it because I don’t know how else I would keep track of all of these workouts I hoard.

Hi Mandy! I really don’t know. I have been interested in it off and on but it is too expensive for me. I do search for it sometimes on Ebay but even on Ebay the bidding quickly gets out of my price range. So, maybe one day if Beachbody puts it on sale (another Black Friday sale) or if I finally win it on Ebay for a reasonable price.

Mandy, I just wanted to give you an update. Since you commented I set up another ebay search for T25 and today I got Gamma super cheap. So now I HAVE to get Alpha and Beta. So Yes, I will be reviewing T25 some time in the future!
**Another update. I just won Alpha and Beta cheap so now I have the entire T25 (except for the core bonus which I am not interested in). So yes, I will be reviewing T25, but I don’t know when.

Can’t wait to read your review of Hammer & Chisel! Trying to decide between this series and Cathe’s ICE (which I should have pre-ordered, but didn’t). I was turned off by the “Intermediate” label. I have so many Cathe DVDs and Cathe Live, so I was thinking H&C would be something different.
I also subscribed to Les Mills on demand recently, but I found it annoying that the videos are cut at 30 minutes.

I am enjoying ICE a lot more than I expected to but it definitely isn’t her most advanced program/series. And I still adore the Cathe Live workouts the best. FYI–as soon as I finish reviewing ICE next week, I am going to do Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s new workouts, then Hammer & Chisel. Not sure yet exactly how I am going to do that review. It will be one review for the whole program, but not certain if I will post it after doing each workout once, or if I will post after doing each workout twice. H&C has a lot of workouts. 18 or 19 I think! So either that review will take nearly a month! But I have been excited about it ever since it was announced!

The “barbells” appear to the be the same, but JM’s does not come with a program. Weider Pink is a 12 workout power-lifting program. Now, with such a light barbell you can’t do any serious power lifting unless you add more weight, which I plan to do. I don’t know how easy it is to add weight to the barbell. It is a Christmas present for me from my husband so I don’t get to actually look at it until Christmas! However, I own 3 other barbells and lots of plates so if it is not sufficient, I plan to do the workouts with one of my other barbells with heavier plates on it. What attracted me to this program was how much I love Kelly Coffey-Meyer’s LIFT workout and there is nothing else like that on the market–until I discovered Pink. Hopefully I will enjoy it as much as LIFT.

This sounds really interesting. It looks to me like you can’t add more weight to the barbell judging by the picture, but maybe you can–it’s just not obvious. But if you have other options, that will work just as well. I will check into Lift as well, and see if I can find the Weider Pink somewhere in Canada–I really want a barbell!. Again, thanks for all the great information. Hope you had a great Christmas!

Hi and glad I am not the only one obsessed with purchasing workout videos. I have been doing P90X3 since the beginning of the year. However I am really missing my Cathe workouts. The 30 minute videos are nice and am thinking of creating a hybrid. If you have not tried the P90X3 it is really great for sticking to it if you have limited time.

It really is ridiculous how many workout DVDs I own. And how many I love! I don’t have the time to do them all as often as I want–and then I keep buying more. It drives me crazy! (Or I drive myself crazy!) I have outlined a rotation that combines Skogg and P90X3. P90X3 will be my doubles workout most days and Skogg + something else will be my morning workout. Not sure when I can get to that rotation but I am looking forward to it–possibly in January. I have read a lot of good things about both P90X3 and Skogg.

Thanks!….. Which Patrick Goudeau? I was looking for cardio, Metabolic, strength training ones… I love Paul Katami’s build and burn…but was looking for even more challenging… I do that one after 2hour cycle intervals or runs with a 25-30lb KB… I have never done STS…it’s better than Butts & Guts or Xtrain Legs/Arms etc?

There are several very advanced Patrick Goudeau workouts. My favorite is probably Body Weight Blast–the heavier your weights, the more advanced it becomes. Hard Work Conditioning 2 is very advanced but not as much fun as some of his others. It is a butt kicker tho. I’ve read that Hard Work Conditioning 24/7 is even more advanced, but I haven’t done that one yet (I own it tho–so it’s on the to do list). Extreme Calorie Burn and Lean, Hot Body are both advanced and fun–and again, go heavier to make them harder. I will say that Body Weight Blast is the easiest to up your weights on. He uses a lot of compound moves in his metabolic workouts which sometimes make it difficult to increase your dumbbells where you want them for some of the moves. I have only done 4 Paul Katami workouts and Build and Burn is probably the hardest of the 4 I’ve done–but some of his others might be more advanced.

And I’m not sure I’m the best person to give you this kind of advice. You seem much more fit than me–ultra marathoning puts me to shame! But I can give my opinion what I have done. However, I can tell you now–I cannot ultra marathon! So I am impressed!

Oh, and STS–yes, better than just about anything else, strength-wise I have every done. But it is a financial and time investment, so if you are looking for something cheaper but still excellent then I would say to stick with Xtrain strength, Gym Styles and Ripped w/ HIIT. Between the 3 of them you would be covered with great strength work.

I was just informed about this amazing blog…. so here’s a question… what is the HARDEST most INTENSE DVD you own and LOVE? I am an ultra marathoner, ironman, and powerlifter… I am used to intense workouts up to 25-30 hours a week…..

It depends on what you are looking for? Cardio? Stretch? Metabolic weight training? Cardio-wise, the hardest I’ve ever done is definitely Insanity. Metabolic weight training is X10–the premix that has you do all 5 sections, one right after the other, also several Patrick Goudeau workouts, Paul Katami’s Build & Burn, there are probably more I am forgetting. As for strength training–that would be Cathe all the way–STS, the Lift It Hit It upper body workouts in Ripped w/ HIIT.

It’s a pity you don’t have a donate button! I’d without a
doubt donate to this outstanding blog! I suppose for now i’ll settle for bookmarking and
adding your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to fresh updates and will share this blog with my Facebook group.

Hi I love doing CAthes workouts.. I have the new ones to.. I was wondering what rotation did you do of hers that gave you a weight loss faster? If any. I am trying to lose some weight now and it is slow going, I got sts to do but had to put it off because of traumatic family issues. I was told that that program will not help me lose. I realize it wont but I was hoping to add some cardio in there and it would do something. I am just so depressed any way that the weight gain is not making it any better. Thanks

Hi renee. I’m sorry to hear you are having a hard time. I haven’t done too many Cathe rotations. I did the 90 Day Xtrain rotation, 5.5 month STS rotation and I’m currently doing Rock Bottoms. But I never follow her rotations to the letter. I always modify–but I use her core structure. Anyway, I got the best results from Xtrain as far as fat loss. But I have to add that weight loss actually happens in the kitchen. You can eat your way through any workout program. With that said, yes, I do believe you can do STS and lose weight. The key would be two things–cleaning up your diet while doing it and adding in adequate interval training. Cathe’s HIIT workouts, Imax workouts, Crossfire, To the Max, Tabatacise, Maximum Intensity Cardio, Cardio Core Circuit are good choices for cardio. And if you want to venture outside of Cathe there are a lot more that would also do the trick. But for the scale to actually drop, you have to change your diet.

That is actually my problem btw. I have been wanting to drop 10 pounds FOREVER but I can never seem to consistently do the work in the kitchen that needs to be done to lose it. And I workout 1.5 hours a day 6 days a week! It’s not enough, unfortunately. Frustrating but true. The best results I’ve ever gotten from a program was ChaLean Extreme–and I followed the food plan as well as the workout plan. I got great results from two other programs I did too–but in both cases I cleaned my diet up. Sadly, because I didn’t keep my diet clean I did not maintain the results. Those 10 pounds keep coming back like a plague.

Thanks for your reviews! I’ve recently found Cathe and become somewhat obsessed! I used to love The Firm, too and still have many of them and do them occasionally. Do you ever try Kelly Coffey Meyer? (coffeyfit.com) …hers are short …maybe not too challenging for you, but I like them. I also just purchased 3 Tracie Long DVDs (reboot) …I’ve only done one so far, but I liked it and I like her as an instructor. (She is by herself in the videos ..no crew). Anyway, I’ve pre-ordered XTrain …so will probably jump on that band wagon when it is finally releases.

Your welcome! Cathe workouts are amazing, aren’t they? I’ve been kind of obsessed with other trainers workouts before (TurboFire, Jari Love and Peak Fit Challenge), but never to the extent I am with Cathe’s workouts. Her workouts are literally all I want to do anymore. And they are so intense and excellent and fun–they do the job!

I did try Kelly Coffey a long time ago–just one DVD and I didn’t like it. I remember tho it was at the same time I originally tried Cathe’s cardio-step workouts the first time (this is 5+ years ago). I hated them both because of the complex step choreography. But I have come around to loving most (not all) of Cathe’s step, so I probably should give Kelly Coffey another try, too!

I’m pretty excited about Xtrain! It should be shipping next week. Fingers crossed!

Hi there, I came across your blogging here while reading reviews of Cathe workouts. I, too, am hooked on Cathe now. Since probably 4 months now. I found BodyRockTV, and was quite fascinated with those HIIT/Tabeta type training. I don’t know how I discovered that Cathe, too, had this same style, but I’m thrilled I did. I, too, was a Firm believer, years and years. I also thought that Cathe’s videos were too confusing and too long, and so I never either got in to her workouts. Had one that I never did, don’t even know why I had it, but have since did it a few times and (High Step Training), and for me it is quite the workout. She has pushed me way over the limits that I had set for myself. I am so much more fit than ever, and have been working out for too many years to count. I am 53. I am stuck on Cathe. I have looked on CollageVideo the other advanced workouts, the ones you mentioned, but I feel like I am betraying Cathe now. But like you said, she has millions to play with and alternate with, and plus her XTrain soon to be released. I do not have your writing talent. So please forgive me. My thoughts just pop out so jambled. I totally thoroughly love your blogs. They help me to know if a workout is advanced and just what it is all about. You have the best descriptions ever. I don’t know how you do it, but you do it well. Thank you very much for your blogging. You do not only help yourself, but definitely help me too. I’m sure you help lots others too. I look forward to reading more of your workout descriptions. But thrilled that you are hooked on Cathe now. Thank you so much!!

Thanks for writing! I’m so glad this blog is useful to others! Isn’t Cathe amazing? I have been working out for years and I can’t believe she has been out there all this time and I haven’t been doing her workouts! It was one of her psycho complex step workouts that scared me away–I am so glad that I finally discovered that her workout library contains so much more than step workouts! I feel bad, neglecting all the other workouts I’ve spent money on, but I can’t help it! I work out because it’s fun–so I want to do what is the most fun for me–and right now, it’s Cathe!